Like some hobbits, a wee Martian helicopter received a special honor.
The final resting place of NASA’s Ingenuity, grounded after its last flight on Jan. 18, now has a new name bestowed from fans of fantasy.
“The Ingenuity team has nicknamed the spot where the helicopter completed its final flight ‘Valinor Hills’ after the fictional location in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels, which include ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy,” NASA officials wrote on Monday (Feb. 6).
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Tolkien (1982-1973), an Anglo-Saxon scholar at the University of Oxford, is best known for his fantasy works that include “Lord of the Rings” (LOTR), “The Hobbit” and “The Silmarillion.”
Several of Tolkien’s stories have been turned into tales for radio, television, streaming and Hollywood, such as the LOTR and “The Hobbit” movie series directed by Peter Jackson in the 2000s and 2010s, and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Amazon Prime series from 2022.
Valinor was a part of the Undying Lands, a location cited often in Tolkien’s mythology. The most-cited reference to those islands comes at the end of LOTR. The elves granted some of the main characters refuge there, after the invitees played key roles in a quest to destroy a powerful finger-ring threatening the universe.
The islands of the Undying Lands were the home of the elves and also the Valar, the latter referring to beings who played a role in creating the world, according to a 2009 paper in the peer-reviewed journal “Mythlore ” led by Keith Kelly, of Pennsylvania’s Kutztown University. While not quite equivalent to the Judeo-Christian concepts of heaven, according to Tolkien’s letters cited in the paper, the Undying Lands are a point of eternal refuge and rest.
The informal name for the location (used by NASA engineers for navigation and honorific purposes) is apt for Ingenuity, which made 72 flights since alighting on the surface of Mars with its robotic companion, the Perseverance rover, on Feb. 18, 2021.
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