back to article NASA explores 'Curiosity' for nuclear-powered Mars rover

A 12-year-old girl from Kansas has chosen the name of NASA's nuclear-powered Mars Science Laboratory rover. Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech Clara Ma, an elementary student from Lenexa, Kansas, submitted the winning entry, "Curiosity" for the space agency's nationwide essay contest for youths to name the rover. Her …

COMMENTS

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  1. LaeMi Qian
    Thumb Up

    Excellent name

    kudos to Clara

  2. Gabriel Vistica
    Alien

    Great...

    So we've been killing Martians the entire time we've been looking for them?

    Just wait until we start sending robots to other planets. I'm sure some of them (like Saturn) will have more easily provoked life-forms than Mars.

  3. Charles Manning

    12yo girl names rover

    OMG, pink pony!

    That passage from her essay doesn't sound like it came from a 12yo. I suspect some over-the shoulder input from an overzealous mom and pop.

    So this thing is going to look for water and signs of life? Like the last three or four? Didn't they find water already? Pretty friggin amazing that it has taken them this long to figure out the perchorate problem. This time they'll probably figure out that the nukes interfere with the radiation sensors.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    don't tell me

    COLBERT was already taken?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Feline investigations

    We can only hope that given the 'success' of Viking and Phoenix at that Curiosity doesn't venture too close to a Martian pet hotel....

  6. Flugal

    Curiosity?

    Didn't it also kill the cat? We've already killed a Beagle.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @Charles Manning

    My "12yo" daughter is perfectly capable of writing that kind of prose.

    Just because your child isn't capable of writing it is no reason to belittle the efforts of others.

  8. oxo
    Unhappy

    Send your name to Mars

    Why oh why would we want to do that?

  9. Simon Ball

    @Charles Manning

    Really? I would have said that the somewhat corny phrasing is EXACTLY what I would expect from a bright 12-year-old girl. As for pink ponies – across the entire country, there are bound to be SOME girls who aren’t obsessed with horses. Just entering the competition implies a much-greater-than-average interest in science.

    As for the perchlorate thing, it seems par for the course for NASA probes. Didn’t someone theorise last year that the Viking landers probably fried the local wildlife with their landing rockets before they even GOT to the sampling stage.

  10. Anonymous John

    "Overlord" would be a better name.

    If we've been exterminating the natives since 1975.

  11. Brutus

    @Charles

    ODFO, you cynical, depressing git!

  12. Steve
    Thumb Down

    We come in peace

    sizzzzleZap.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Put your name on a Martian Hit List...No thanks...

    So this nuclear-powered Mars rover, I'm Curious is it Stirling or thermocouple? anyone know??

  14. Austin Chamberlain
    Happy

    @oxo

    We send our names to Mars so that when the next Tunguska meteorite wipes us all out, leaving nothing but cockroaches and New Labour apparatchiks (but I repeat myself), there will be some trace of intelligent life left in our solar system.

    Have a nice day! :D

  15. Lionel Baden

    @charles

    made me lol ignore the other do righters above :D

    lol@AC 06:18 GMT

    seriously though you have made your point if its really the parent, loved reading your post keep it up.

  16. Alistair

    Its not curiosity in my house

    Oh no. Its not curiosity that wakes me up every frickin' morning. Its the cat.

  17. Your Command
    Alien

    If we're immolated, were we 'life'?

    So that's why aliens in movies zap everything with rayguns. They're just trying to 'analyze [our] materials in gas form'

  18. Steven Shuster
    Alien

    We come in peace

    And here we though the Martians were going to come here and kill US with heat rays. Oh the irony of it all.

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