Apollo 11 launch as broadcast live by NASA on July 16, 1969

Twenty-eight thousand students across the United States submitted essays and proposed names for NASA’s newest Mars rover and on Thursday, the agency announced the winner: Perseverance, submitted by Virginia seventh-grader Alexander Mather.

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be geared up for the long haul when they launch from the Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft later this month, but they won’t know exactly how long they will be in orbit until they are already aboard the International Space Station.

Nine Merlin engines ignited and throttled up to nearly 2 million pounds of thrust Sunday during a brief hold-down firing of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, sending a plume of smoke out of the flame trench at Kennedy Space Center’s historic launch pad 39A as the company preps for a space station cargo mission next weekend.