Vote to name the first Canadian rover travelling the moon

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is launching the first Canadian rover to the moon. To commemorate the occasion, the CSA invites Canadians to vote on what the rover should be called.

The Canadian rover will travel from Earth to the Moon to explore the South Pole. This rover will gather scientific information and search for water in the form of ice. The rover will be joined by Humanity, the NASA-led rover, which returns to the moon.

“All Canadians are invited to vote for the name of the Canadian lunar rover,” the CSA states on the voting page within the Government of Canada website. Polling for consideration is already open and will run until December 2024. The CSA confirms that only one vote per person will be tabulated.

Before Canadians get ahead of themselves, the CSA is only allowing votes to go towards four pre-selected names. Thus, you can’t vote for the rover’s name to be anything outlandish or anything pulled from online memes. Instead, the CSA organized a handful of more thoughtful options to choose from.

These include ‘Athabasca,’ named after the river flowing from the Rockies through Alberta to Lake Athabasca. Another option is ‘Courage,’ which signified bravery and “the work that has led to the Canadian lunar rover.” The third option is ‘Glacier,’ which illustrates the ice that the rover will be looking for while on the moon. Finally, ‘Pol-R’ is a riff on the word “polar” and refers to the moon’s South Pole, where the rover will be researching.

Coupled with the fact that this will be the first time Canada sends a rover to the moon, this is the first Canadian-led mission on another planet/moon. The science team will consist of faculty and students stretching across six Canadian universities. Representatives from Québec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia will be working on the projects alongside several scientists from the U.S. and the U.K.

The rover is expected to launch sometime in 2026 at the very earliest.

Image: Canadian Space Agency

Source: Government of Canada