'Perseverance' is the new name of NASA's Mars 2020 Rover

Perseverance currently is undergoing final assembly and checkout at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA has finally revealed the new name of its Mars 2020 Rover, its next robotic scientist to visit the Red Planet and now it will officially be known as 'Perseverance'. The winning name was suggested by Alexander Mather, a 13-year-old student from Virginia, following a nationwide contest.

The Mars 2020 rover naming contest that was held last year drew more than 28,000 essays explaining why the proposed name should be chosen.

Mather and his family will be invited to the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to witness the rover begin its journey when it launches this summer, mid-July. NASA also is acknowledging the valuable contributions of the 155 semifinalists. Rover names and essays proposed by them have been stenciled onto a silicon chip with lines of text smaller than one-thousandth the width of a human hair and will be flown to Mars aboard the rover.

"This was a chance to help the agency that put humans on the Moon and will soon do it again. This Mars rover will help pave the way for the human presence there and I wanted to try and help in any way I could. Refusal of the challenge was not an option," said Mather.

Perseverance will probe a region of the Red Planet for signs of past microbial life and characterize the planet's climate and geology, paving the way for human exploration of Mars. It will collect core samples of soil and rock, and cache them on the Martian surface for their return on a potential future sample-retrieval mission.

The rover will use the two scientific instruments mounted on its robotic arm to search for signs of past life. Perseverance currently is undergoing final assembly and checkout at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.