WASHINGTON, March 29 (Xinhua) -- Up to 10,932,295 people have submitted their names to ride aboard NASA's Perseverance rover to Mars, according to a latest release of NASA.
The names were stenciled by electron beam onto three fingernail-sized silicon chips, along with the essays of the 155 finalists in NASA's "Name the Rover" contest.
The chips were attached to an anodized aluminum plate on NASA's Perseverance Mars rover at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 16.
The plate is affixed to the center of the rover's aft crossbeam and will be visible to cameras on Perseverance's mast.
Scheduled to launch this summer, Perseverance will land at Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.
NASA said that the novel coronavirus has not yet impacted Perseverance' launch schedule.
According to NASA, the Perseverance rover will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize Mars' climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth, and help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.
