[ti:Perseverance: Mars Rover Gets Name Ahead of Summer Launch] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.04]NASA's newest Mars rover is one step closer to being ready to launch next summer. [00:10.04]It now has a name. [00:13.84]The American space agency announced recently that it has named the six-wheeled robotic explorer Perseverance. [00:25.56]The rover, which weighs about 1,043 kilograms, will take off for the Red Planet in July. [00:37.08]Its job is to collect samples from Mars for eventual return to Earth. [00:46.36]Part of its mission is to look for signs of past microbial life. [00:54.00]It will also study the planet's climate and geology. [01:00.40]Perseverance is currently going through final building steps and inspection at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. [01:11.88]It is targeted to land at Mars' Jezero Crater a little after 3:40 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on February 18, 2021. [01:29.48]Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary defines perseverance as "the quality that allows someone [01:38.80]to continue to do something even though it is difficult." [01:44.72]The name was suggested by 13-year-old Alexander Mather. [01:52.56]He took part in the naming contest for American schoolchildren. [01:58.00]NASA announced the name last Thursday at the boy's school in Burke, Virginia. [02:04.64]Mather said humans are explorers, "and we will meet many setbacks" or problems on the way to Mars. [02:16.92]"However, we can persevere," he wrote. "We, not as a nation, but as humans, will not give up. [02:28.12]The human race will always persevere into the future." [02:34.60]NASA's associate administrator for science missions, Thomas Zurbuchen, [02:41.00]said that the space agency's Curiosity rover has been exploring Mars since 2012. [02:50.16]Curiosity continues to send data and pictures back to Earth. [02:58.44]The qualities of "perseverance and curiosity together are what exploration is all about," Zurbuchen said. [03:10.68]A plate with the name Perseverance was attached to the rover on March 4. [03:17.68]It serves to block the rover from rocks and debris and protect cables. [03:26.16]Mather got the idea for his name from the other rovers that came before it. [03:34.32]They have names like Curiosity, Insight, Spirit and Opportunity. [03:42.72]"If you think about it, all of these names of past Mars rovers are qualities we possess as humans," he wrote. [03:53.20]"... But, if rovers are to be the qualities of us as a race, we missed the most important thing. Perseverance." [04:06.08]This rover is the latest in a line of Red Planet robotic explorers to be named by school-age children, [04:17.52]beginning with Sojourner in 1997. [04:22.28]Each one was chosen after a nationwide contest. [04:28.52]Mather will travel with his family to Cape Canaveral in Florida [04:34.28]to watch the rover begin its trip to Mars when it launches this summer. [04:41.88]Just two years ago, Mather was more interested in video games than space. [04:49.88]That changed in the summer of 2018, when he visited Space Camp in Alabama. [04:57.80]He became a space fan the first time he saw a Saturn V - the rocket [05:05.24]that launched the Apollo astronauts to the Moon half a century ago. [05:11.80]The naming contest began last August. American schoolchildren from kindergarten to 12th grade wrote to NASA. [05:23.12]A total of 28,000 students sent in their ideas. [05:30.44]Nearly 4,700 volunteer judges narrowed it down to 155 semifinalists. [05:42.60]Once that group was down to nine finalists, the public got a chance to vote. [05:49.24]More than 770,000 people from all around the world voted online. [05:58.72]Outside of the United States, the most votes came from Turkey, then Romania and the United Kingdom. [06:08.84]Others weighing in on the voting included people from Iran, Ghana and South Sudan. [06:17.84]And two people voted from Antarctica. [06:22.92]I'm Anne Ball. [06:24.92]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM