NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Mission Honors Navajo Language
Source: NASA
Canyon de Chelly National Monument (“Tséyi’” in Navajo) in Arizona is located on Navajo Nation land. Members of NASA’s Perseverance rover team, in collaboration with the Navajo Nation, has been naming features of scientific interest with words in the Navajo language.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The first scientific focus of NASA’s Perseverance rover is a rock named “Máaz” – the Navajo word for “Mars.” The rover’s team, in collaboration with the Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President, has been naming features of scientific interest with words in the Navajo language.
Surface missions assign nicknames to landmarks to provide the mission’s team members, which number in the thousands, a common way to refer to rocks, soils, and other geologic features of interest. Previous rover teams have named features after regions of geologic interest on Earth as well as people and places related to expeditions. Although the International Astronomical Union designates official names for planetary features, these informal names are used as reference points by the team.
Before launch, Perseverance’s team divided the Jezero Crater landing site into a grid of quadrangles, or “quads,” that are roughly 1 square mile (1.5 square kilometers) in size. The team decided to name these quads after national parks and preserves on Earth with similar geology. Perseverance touched down in the quad named for Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly National Monument (Tséyi’ in Navajo), in the heart of the Navajo Nation. The team’s plan was to compile a list of names inspired by each quad’s national park that could be used to name features observed by Perseverance. Mission scientists worked with a Navajo (or Diné) engineer on the team, Aaron Yazzie of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, to seek the Navajo Nation’s permission and collaboration in naming new features on Mars.
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez, Vice President Myron Lizer, and their advisors made a list of words in the Navajo language available to the rover’s team. Some terms were inspired by the terrain imaged by Perseverance at its landing site. For example, one suggestion was “tséwózí bee hazhmeezh,” or “rolling rows of pebbles, like waves.” Yazzie added suggestions like “strength” (“bidziil”) and “respect” (“hoł nilį́”) to the list. Perseverance itself was translated to “Ha’ahóni.”
Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-s-perseverance-mars-rover-mission-honors-navajo-language
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origins of The Navajo and The Apache. But you didn't ask and I do appreciate that! 
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