English: PIA24615: Closeup of Send Your Name to Mars Chips on Perseverance Rover

Close up image of Perseverance rover's deck shows a black plate with the three chips and a line drawing showing Mars and Earth with the Sun in the middle.

This image of NASA's Mars Perseverance rover shows a plate fastened to the rover aft crossbeam (lower right) with three fingernail-sized chips stenciled with nearly 11 million names of Earthlings. The full-resolution image was taken by the Perseverance rover's left Navigation Camera (Navcam) on Feb. 28, 2021.

The names were submitted as part of the Send Your Name to Mars campaign. Anyone who missed this opportunity can sign up to send their name on the next Mars mission.

The chips also include winning student contest essays that led to the selection of Perseverance as the rover's name and Ingenuity as the name for the experimental helicopter it carried to Mars. The plate has a laser-etched graphic depicting Mars and Earth connected by the Sun's rays illuminating both, and a hidden Morse code message says "Explore as One." The illustration honors plaques on the Pioneer spacecraft, and the Golden Records carried into space by Voyager 1 and 2.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory built and manages operations of Perseverance and Ingenuity for the agency. Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.