Clara Ma gave NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover the name Curiosity.
Ma was a 12-year-old sixth-grade student at Sunflower Elementary School in Lenexa, Kansas, when she entered NASA’s nationwide naming contest. Her winning essay argued that curiosity drives people to ask questions, explore the unknown, and seek understanding—an apt description of a rover designed to investigate Mars’s past habitability.
NASA announced the winning name in May 2009, more than two years before the rover launched. As part of her prize, Ma visited NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and signed her name on the rover while it was being assembled in a clean room.
The names in the wrong-option list belong to other Mars-rover naming stories. Valerie Ambroise named Sojourner, while Sofi Collis proposed the name Spirit for NASA’s earlier rover pair; Mary Anning is the name of a fossil-hunting pioneer, not the student who named Curiosity. Curiosity launched in 2011 and landed in Gale crater in 2012.