#NASA’s Perseverance uses Navajo language to name Mars landmarks

From Red Rock Country to the Red Planet.

NASA’s Perseverance mission to Mars is naming alien features with words from the Navajo language, as part of its 16-year-long partnership with the American Indian nation.

The rover’s first scientific object of study was a rock named “Máaz” – the Navajo word for “Mars,” the space agency said. NASA released audio Wednesday of a laser zapping the rock on March 2.

Surface missions give nicknames to geologic landmarks to make it easier for scientists to distinguish extraterritorial features of interest. Perseverance team members have a list of about 50 Navajo names to assign to Mars rocks, soils and areas.

Perseverance landed in the Tséyi’ quadrant of the planet’s Jezero Crater last month. The area was named for Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly National Monument in the middle of the Navajo Nation. Other possible monikers inspired by the Martian terrain include “tséwózí bee hazhmeezh,” or “rolling rows of pebbles, like waves,” and “respect,” or “hoł nilį́,” NASA said.

“The partnership that the Nez-Lizer Administration has built with NASA will help to revitalize our Navajo language,” Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said.

“We hope that having our language used in the Perseverance mission will inspire more of our young Navajo people to understand the importance and the significance of learning our language. Our words were used to help win World War II, and now we are helping to navigate and learn more about the planet Mars.”

A Navajo engineer on the Perseverance team has been the arbitrator between the Navajo Nation and NASA on the collaborative project. Aaron Yazzie has been working to anglicize the unique accented punctuation of the Navajo language so it can be recognized by the space agency’s computers.

“We are excited for the NASA team and for Aaron and we see him as being a great role model who will inspire more interest in the STEM fields of study and hopefully inspire more of our young people to pursue STEM careers to make even greater impacts and contributions just as Aaron is doing,” President Nez said.

Scientists have been eager to participate in the interplanetary language lesson, according to NASA.

“This partnership is encouraging the rover’s science team to be more thoughtful about the names being considered for features on Mars – what they mean both geologically and to people on Earth,” Perseverance Deputy Project Scientist Katie Stack Morgan of JPL said.

The informal Navajo names are only being used by the Perseverance team; only the International Astronomical Union can formally name outer space landmarks.

NASA officials hope that samples and data gathered by the rover during its multi-year mission will unlock the secret to life on Mars and prepare astronauts for human exploration there.