While this may seem arbitrary, Seeger said it's an improvement over how names were chosen in the past. "Smaller features like rocks, cliffs, meteorites - those get nicknames chosen by the rover teams that are not official, but they do stick." Small craters on Mars must be named after small towns," Seeger pointed out. "Official names get assigned by the International Astronomical Union, which has strict guidelines for features across the whole solar system. While Jezero and Bela are official names, "Ubajara" is a nickname - an unofficial moniker. Perseverance's older cousin Curiosity recently drilled a rock sample from a location known as "Ubajara," which is named after a national park in Brazil. Jezero, meanwhile, means "lake" in many Slavic languages. As an example, the Perseverance rover is currently investigating rock outcrops alongside the rim of Belva Crater, a large impact crater within the even larger Jezero Crater.īelva is named after a town in West Virginia, which in turn is named after Belva Ann Lockwood, an American lawyer who was one of the first women in the U.S. Some are given official names, while others receive nicknames. There are two main categories of names given to objects on Mars. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS) Examples of Martian names The Curiosity Mars rover snapped this selfie at Mont Mercou, which is named after a mountain in France, in March 2021.
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