![]() Thursday's traverse lasted about 33 minutes and put 21 feet (6.5 meters) on Perseverance's odometer. ![]() Perseverance has already begun to venture out from Butler Landing: In addition to announcing the landing site's name, members of the mission team shared imagery from the 1-ton, six-wheeled rover's first drive since its Feb. The place where NASA's Curiosity rover touched down in 2012 is called Bradbury Landing, as a tribute to Ray Bradbury, the author of "The Martian Chronicles" and many other works of science fiction. Those names honor space shuttle crews who lost their lives in 19. In 2004, NASA designated the landing sites for the Opportunity and Spirit Mars rovers as Challenger Memorial Station and Columbia Memorial Station, respectively. The 1997 landing site for NASA's Pathfinder mission to Mars is known as Carl Sagan Memorial Station, in honor of the late astronomer and author of "Contact." ![]() The official names of geographical features on other planets must be approved by the International Astronomical Union, but NASA has a tradition of giving its own names to off-world landing sites – for example, Tranquility Base, the place on the moon where Apollo 11 touched down in 1969. Her work continues to inspire today's scientists and engineers across the globe – all in the name of a bolder, more equitable future for all." "Her guiding principle, 'When using science, do so accurately,' is what the science team at NASA is all about. Butler, who not only grew up next door to JPL in Pasadena, but she also inspired millions with her visions of a science-based future," Zurbuchen said. ![]() "I can think of no better person to mark this historic landing site than Octavia E. In his own tribute to Butler, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for space science, emphasized the connection to Southern California, the home of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Perseverance mission operations. In 1995, she was awarded a fellowship from the MacAurthur Foundation, She moved to the Seattle area in 1999, where she died unexpectedly in 2006 at the age of 58, after sustaining a head injury in a fall on a walkway outside her home in Lake Forest Park, Wash. She published her first book in 1976 and broke into the mostly white, male dominated world of science fiction writing. "Butler inspired and influenced the planetary science community and many beyond, including those typically under-represented in STEM fields."īutler grew up poor in Pasadena and attended Pasadena City College, where she focused on writing. "Butler's protagonists embody determination and inventiveness, making her a perfect fit for the Perseverance rover mission and its theme of overcoming challenges," Kathryn Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for Perseverance, said in a news release. Butler Landing, in honor of a Black author who emphasized diversity in tales of alternate realities and far-out futures. Today NASA announced that the Red Planet locale where its Perseverance rover touched down last month is called Octavia E. Butler has joined an exclusive pantheon of space luminaries memorialized on Mars. JPL built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.įor more about Perseverance: years after her death, science-fiction author Octavia E. The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust). The University of Arizona in Tucson provided and operates HiRISE.Ī key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. ![]() Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the spacecraft. MRO’s mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The landing location is marked with a star in this image from the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Butler Landing,” after the science fiction author Octavia E. NASA has named the landing site of the agency’s Perseverance rover “Octavia E. ![]()
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