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NASA highlights the Navajo language with its latest mission to Mars.
After successfully landing on the Red Planet on February 18, NASA Perseverance rover explores, focusing his sights on a rock named “Máaz”, the Navajo word for “Mars”. The team behind the rover is in collaboration with the Office of the President and Vice President of the Navajo Nation, and together they named different features of the Martian surface using words from the Navajo language.
Scientists from the NASA mission worked with Aaron Yazzie, a member of the Navajo (or Diné) team, an engineer for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission at the agency. Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to request permission and cooperation from the Navajo Nation to name these features. (Yazzie built the drills that the rover will use to collect samples from the planet.) Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez, Vice President Myron Lizer, and their advisers have created a Navajo language wordlist that the teams NASA could use for the mission.
“The partnership that the Nez-Lizer administration has established with NASA will help revitalize our Navajo language,” said President Nez said in a statement from NASA. “We hope that the use of our language as part of the Perseverance mission will inspire more of our young Navajo to understand the importance and meaning of learning our language. Our words were used to help win WWII, and now we’re helping navigate. and learn more about the planet Mars. “
Related: NASA and the Navajo Nation team up to understand the universe
By assigning names to local landmarks on Mars, it is easier for mission team members to refer to features like rocks and soils. While the planetary features have formal names given by the International Astronomical Union, these informal names are used by the team.
“This fateful landing on Mars created a special opportunity to inspire Navajo youth not only with incredible scientific and technical feats, but also by including our language in such a meaningful way,” Yazzie said in the statement. from NASA.
The Navajo Nation team provided the rover team with a list of 50 words they could use to get started and will work together on more names as the rover explores more. This list includes names like “Máaz” and “tséwózí bee hazhmeezh” (which means “to roll rows of pebbles, like waves”), “bidziil” (which means “force”) and “hoł nilį́” (which means ” respect “). The Navajo Nation team even included the Navajo language word for “Perseverance” which translates to “Ha’ahóni.”
Related: What’s in a name: why NASA chose ‘perseverance’ for its rover on Mars
The rover was to land in one of the many quadrangles plotted on a grid in Crater lake, each “quad” measuring approximately 1 square mile (1.5 square kilometers). They named these quads after natural areas on Earth with similar geological features, and Perseverance ended up landing in the quad named after Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly National Monument, or Tséyi in the Navajo language, which is at its heart. of the Navajo Nation.
Now, in order for Perseverance to identify these characteristics in the Navajo language, it must learn the language. However, the English language limits are not able to fully express the intonation and accents of Navajo words, so the team is working to find translations that better represent Navajo spellings. In the meantime, they use English letters to represent Navajo words. Mission scientists and team members also take this opportunity to learn Navajo words.
“This partnership encourages 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,” said Katie Stack Morgan, associate scientist at the Project Perseverance, from JPL in the same release.
Space.com spoke to Yazzie at JPL on February 18 immediately thereafter. the successful landing of the rover, who will look for signs of ancient life on Mars. “We’re so excited, I’m so relieved, it’s such a beautiful day,” Yazzie told Space.com.
“It seems unreal and it is unreal to be part of such a history [mission]”Yazzie added.” It feels like we are bringing knowledge to the whole world on behalf of humanity. The possibility that we may find ancient microbial life on Mars, [it] would be a huge find and I am so excited that I even have a small part in this find. “
“We are very proud of one of our own, Aaron Yazzie, who plays a pivotal role in NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Mission,” President Nez said. “We are thrilled for the NASA team and for Aaron and we see him as a great role model who will inspire more interest in STEM fields of study and hopefully inspire more of our young people to pursue careers. STEM to make an even bigger impact and like Aaron does. As the mission continues, we offer our prayers for continued success. “
Email Chelsea Gohd at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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