This rock, called “Máaz” (the Navajo word for “Mars”), is the first feature of scientific interest to be studied by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

When you’re exploring a planet, you have to name things. It’s a great way to memorialize your discoveries, but it also prevents confusion: are you going to study This Rock, That Rock, or The Other Rock?

The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission Mars 2020 is hard at work exploring Mars. The mission’s rover, Perseverance, landed on Feb. 18, 2021, in Jezero Crater. The mission planners have been naming important surface features in the Navajo language. This decision wasn’t planned before the rover landed, but came about by happy circumstance.

Landing on another solar system body is tough. Mission planners can guide a lander to a general destination, but they cannot pinpoint an exact landing site. Mars 2020 mission planners could guide Perseverance to Jezero Crater, but they could not know where in the 28-mile (45-kilometer) wide crater the rover was going to land. Therefore, mission planners studied the entire crater to prepare for landing. They divided the crater into several sections, naming each after a place on Earth—including U.S. national monuments—that the section resembled in some way.

Perseverance landed within the section that planners had named after Canyon de Chelly National Monument. This national monument, known for its huge, colorful, steep-walled canyons, lies entirely within the Navajo reservation. The Navajo are one of the largest Native American groups in the United States. The Navajo reservation, which covers 16 million acres (6.5 million hectares), is the nation’s biggest reservation. It includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

Canyon de Chelly National Monument (“Tséyi’” in Navajo) in Arizona is located on Navajo Nation land. Members of NASA’s Perseverance rover team, in collaboration with the Navajo Nation, has been naming features of scientific interest with words in the Navajo language.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Mars mission scientists informally name important features to make them easier to identify. Mars 2020 mission scientists were inspired by the name of their landing site to nickname features in the Navajo language. They teamed up with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientist Aaron Yazzie, who is Navajo, to seek permission from the Navajo Nation. The nation’s government approved the idea and developed a list of potential names. The first name to be used was Máaz, the Navajo word for Mars, for a rock near the landing site. Navajo officials also included the translation for Perseverance: Ha’ahóni.

Perseverance has to be “taught” the language, since the computer languages the rover uses cannot process the special characters and diacritical marks used in the written Navajo language. Mars 2020 team members are working to develop better transliterations using the English alphabet.

This is not the first time the Navajo language has played an outsized role in United States history. During the United States’ involvement in World War II (1939-1945), Navajo radio operators sent secret messages using a code based on the Navajo language. At the time, Navajo was an unwritten language known to few people outside of the Navajo Nation. Its complex structure, difficult pronunciation, and singsong qualities made it nearly impossible to decipher. Although Imperial Japanese forces could overhear the messages, they never managed to decode them. The Navajo radio operators, called code talkers, have been honored for their service in the war.

Mars 2020 has shed its proverbial training wheels and is breaking new ground in the exploration of the Red Planet. The helicopter Ingenuity, another part of the mission, conducted its first flight on April 19. Engineers are now pushing Ingenuity further, conducting longer, more challenging flights. The craft’s performance will gather valuable information for future Mars flyers. Perseverance’s robotic arm began conducting science on May 11. As the mission continues to explore, planners will continue to nickname features in the Navajo language—a tribute to the Navajo people, their culture, and the land they call home.

NASA’s Mars 2020 rover Perseverance
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars is one of the most difficult destinations to arrive safely at in the solar system, but you might not know it if you have been paying attention to the news lately. Earthlings are a perfect three-for-three on Mars missions this February. Two countries saw their first missions ever arrive at the Red Planet last week. Then yesterday, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) landed the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance on the surface of Mars. This flotilla of missions to the Red Planet was facilitated by a favorable alignment in the middle of 2020 that brought the planet close to Earth.

On February 9, a spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) arrived in orbit around Mars. The orbiter, called Hope or Amal, will map Martian weather on a planet-wide scale. Such mapping has never been attempted before. UAE became just the fifth country to reach the planet. All systems look good at the moment, but Hope is due to enter the orbit from which it will conduct its mapping in May. At that point, engineers will know for sure if the probe will be able to accomplish its mission.

Hot on Hope’s heels was an ambitious mission sent by the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The mission, called Tianwen-1, went into orbit around Mars the next day. The mission consists of an orbiter, a lander, and a rover. The lander and rover will attempt a landing in a few months. If CNSA successfully deploys Tianwen-1, China will become the third country to land a spacecraft on Mars and just the second to land a rover on Mars.

The last—but certainly not least—to arrive was Perseverance. The rocket carrying the beefy rover blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on July, 30, 2020. Perseverance is the largest rover ever sent to Mars. It’s the size of a small automobile and weighs over 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) on Earth.

Unlike China and the UAE, the United States is a Mars veteran. NASA has landed several successful missions there, including the still-operational sibling craft of Perseverance, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity.

The design of Perseverance is based on that of Curiosity, which has been exploring Mars since 2012. Engineers used many extra components that were originally created as backups for Curiosity in case of manufacturing defects in the originals. But Perseverance is more than just a pile of spare parts. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientists and engineers modified—and beefed up—the design to fit Perseverance’s mission. Perseverance is about 5 inches (13 centimeters) longer and 278 pounds (126 kilograms) heavier than Curiosity.

No matter how many successful missions are under a space agency’s belt, getting a spacecraft to Mars is a heart-pounding ordeal. Landing on the Red Planet is especially challenging. Mars is a large planet, so its gravity pulls spacecraft towards it at high speed. It lacks a thick atmosphere like that of Earth, however, that spacecraft could use to slow down. Furthermore, retrorockets placed on the rover would scour the ground near the landing site and contaminate it with rocket exhaust.

JPL has developed a complex of system to land a large rover on the Martian surface, which was first used with MSL. A parachute slowed the craft after it entered the Martian atmosphere. A set of rockets then fired to hover the craft above the surface. Then, Perseverance was lowered to the ground on a tether. Mission planners call this complicated ride through the atmosphere, filled with opportunities for mission-ending disaster, “the seven minutes of terror.”

Perseverance touched down in Jezero Crater. Billions of years ago, the crater held a lake that was fed by a river system. Perseverance will explore this ancient river delta and search for signs of past life there.

Perseverance carries many sophisticated scientific instruments that will enable it study the geology and climate of the region. The rover is equipped with a special drill and sample vials. After studying the rock samples it has drilled, it will place them in sealed vials and cache (stow) them on the surface. Scientists hope to recover the cached vials and send them to Earth in an ambitious sample return mission in a decade or so.

Other special features included an upgraded autonomous driving package, which will enable Perseverance to pick its way through obstacles on its own to reach a target, and a small helicopter drone called Ingenuity that will look to demonstrate the first powered flight on a solar system body other than Earth. Expect to hear about more exciting discoveries—and see more stunning pictures of Mars—in the months and years ahead.