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(CNN) – Aiming to make history as the first aircraft to attempt a flight on another planet, NASA’s new helicopter going to Mars already has a name that does its daunting task: Ingenuity (Ingenio, in Spanish).
And all thanks to Vaneeza Rupani, 17 years old.
Rupani, a high school student from Northport, Alabama, earned the honor of naming the helicopter after submitting her essay in NASA’s “Name the Rover” contest. While NASA announced in March that its next space exploration vehicle would be named Perseverance, based on the test by seventh-grade student Alexander Mather, the agency decided to also choose a name for the helicopter that will accompany the rover to Mars.
Rupani’s publication was among the 28,000 essays submitted by twelfth-grade students from all US states and territories. According to NASA, which made the announcement on Wednesday.
“The ingenuity and brilliance of people who work hard to overcome the challenges of interplanetary travel are what allow us to experience the wonders of space exploration,” Rupani wrote in his essay, according to a NASA press release. “Ingenuity is what enables people to accomplish amazing things, and allows us to expand our horizons to the edges of the universe,” he said.
Model of the NASA helicopter named Ingenuity by Vaneeza Rupani.
Rupani has been interested in space science since she was a little girl, according to her mother, Nausheen Rupani.
On her way to school every day, she and her father pretended they were in a spaceship. They imagined seeing planets (buildings), stars (traffic lights), on their way and gave them names, “Nausheen Rupani told NASA.
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That her essay was selected was more than exciting, the teenager said.
“(I thought) ingenuity would be a good name for the helicopter because that is exactly what it took to design this machine,” he told NASA. “The helicopter is an incredible project and I am delighted to participate in its journey.”
Ingenuity and Perseverance are slated to launch in July and land next February in Jezero Crater on Mars, the site of a lake that existed 3.5 billion years ago. While the rover collects samples from Mars, the helicopter will attempt to fly and, if successful, will allow future missions to Mars to “add an aerial dimension to its explorations,” according to NASA.
Future aircraft could help investigate targets that are difficult to reach in space exploration vehicles, such as cliffs, caves, and deep craters, and could also carry scientific instruments.
The launch of Perseverance and Ingenuity is part of Artemis’s broader program, in which NASA intends to bring the first woman and the next man to the Moon, in 2024, and eventually send astronauts to Mars.
