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Download Clara Ma, the daughter of Chinese immigrants to the US, became part of space history when she witnessed one of the most sophisticated instruments ever used to explore another world successfully land on Mars with a name suggested by her. The $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory and its Curiosity rover landed on the Red Planet on Sunday to determine if life ever existed there. Clara, from Kansas, suggested the name Curiosity in a winning essay submitted to NASA three years ago. Clara, now 15, was a special guest at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for the historic landing, according to the Kansas City Star newspaper. She also wrote her name inside the rover with a marker pen and experienced the thrill of watching the car-size rover liftoff in November from Cape Canaveral in Florida, the newspaper said. "Something like this is probably never going to happen to me again, so I just want to enjoy every single moment," Clara was quoted as saying as she waited in the control room where the anticipation and anxiety was building. This is witnessing history and "I am going to be part of it", she said. Clara's 14-year-old sister, Renny, and her parents, Lisheng Cao and Frank Ma, accompanied her to the laboratory. Both parents graduated from Tsinghua University and immigrated to the US in the 1990s, according to a People's Daily article. | 
