Your Connection to Mars

Name a Crater: Make an Impact

I’ve named a couple of craters on a Mars atlas map that will be taken to the Red Planet before the end of this decade.

Have you?

You can, you know. It’s an exciting idea developed by Uwingu.com, and an incredibly super way to raise funds in support of support science research and education here on Earth. You get to name a crater on a Mars map posted on the Uwingu site. In essence, you — and people around the world — are helping populate a map of Mars with names that you suggest. Different crater sizes cost different amounts of money — starting at $5.00 and up. As a result, Uwingu raises support funds for scientists and educators involved in seminal projects.

There are some half million craters on the Uwingu Mars map, and if they all get named, it could raise up to $10 million. If they get named by the end of 2014, that would be just in time to celebrate the 2015 fiftieth anniversary of the first interplanetary Mars explorations that began in the mid-1960s.

Mars Explorers Will Use the Uwingu Map

You know what’s even MORE cool? The Uwingu Mars Map with all the names suggested by the public will be USED by the Mars One project — the start-up that is planning to send robotic and human Mars One missions. Today, Uwingu and Mars One officially announced that Uwingu’s Mars Craters map will be part of their standard “toolkit” for Mars exploration.

Bas Lansdorp, co-founder and CEO of the Mars One effort, sees the Uwingu Mars Map as absolutely essential. “Mars One is very excited about this partnership because the goal of Mars one and the educational and science research goals of Uwingu are so well aligned,” he said. “Mars One is organizing mankind’s Mars mission, using people from around the world. Everyone gets the opportunity to participate in Mars exploration. For us it’s a really nice partnership.”

Going to Mars is the space exploration of a new generation. It requires audacious new thinking and bold planning. And, to put it politely, explorers with their boots on the Mars surface aren’t going to sit around waiting for an outmoded gentleman’s club method of naming things that has prevailed in the past, where a commission appoints a committee and they have lots of meetings, and in the meantime, people on Mars have said, “The heck with it, we’ll name this place “Heinlein Ridge” and move on. For practical purposes, it will be important to equip the first Mars explorers with a map ahead of time, if for no other reason than to help communications, navigation, and other mission-related procedures. We already have high-quality Mars surface imagery available, and Uwingu is using that in their project. This is a huge advantage for Mars explorers that Earth-bound explorers never had. They were exploring Terra Incognita. Mars explorers will be walking across Ares Cognita, and the Uwingu Mars Map will be an essential tool for them. 

The Uwingu Mars Map crater-naming project launched last week, and really caught the public imagination. According to Alan Stern, Uwingu founder and CEO, and a planetary scientist involved with the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the outer solar system, the response has been phenomenal. “We opened our online doors on Wednesday, midday on the east coast. News stories started to flow immediately. Social media began raining down,” he said. “That was a few days ago. Since then, we’ve had people from 57 countries on six continents log in to name nearly 6,000 features on Mars. That’s nearly half of what was named in 50 years of the old way of doing things.”

That’s right, only 15,000 features have been named on Mars in 50 years. The pace of Mars exploration is incredibly fast, perhaps too fast for the old ways of naming things to keep up. The history of naming objects during periods of exploration usually happens as explorers open up new places and its a “real time” activity. “When Apollo landed on the Moon, they named features for astronauts, mission controllers, and so on,” said Alan, describing lunar names that are still often used but somehow have never been ingested into the “official” IAU databases. “What we’re doing is making a preparatory map for missions to Mars using names that are contributed by the people of Earth, who are paying for those missions through their taxes. We will have the most utilitarian and useful map of Mars with all those names. We think we are doing a public service for NASA, for other space agencies, for Mars One, for the public, by pushing the pedal to the metal to knock off all the naming of those features on Mars.”

I am a HUGE supporter of Mars missions. Anybody who’s been reading my blog over the years knows that. If I could go to Mars, I would SO be there! So, in that light, I find the Mars crater map naming process fascinating. It resonates with me, probably because I have been SO involved in astronomy and space science outreach over the years. I’ve always known that one important way to engage people’s interest in these topics is to make it personal for them. To involve their emotions and interests. And, what could be more personal and touching than putting your name (or someone else’s) on another planet? To know that it might be used? It personalizes Mars and space exploration. It’s a way of conferring a little bit of immortality in a huge universe. And, anybody who can generate excitement by finding a way to kindle people’s interest in this exploration merits my positive attention.

Uwingu, with Mars One, is opening up a new a new and enticing facet of Mars exploration to the public. We know that there WILL be Mars missions, and that those explorers will either need to name places as they go along, or ideally, have maps already charted to simplify their lives. I’ve had conversations with Alan about this project and its meaning to the public and where it fits in the standard hierarchy of naming objects in space. He pointed out that the Uwingu fundraising effort is focused on the Mars Map itself because the time is fast approaching when Mars crater (and other surface features) will need names. ”The Mars One participation points out an important reason for having a complete map of Mars with names ready to go,” he said. “For the first Mars explorers — the ones who actually go to Mars, and for the people of Earth, we think this is going to be THE standard map.”

So, the Uwingu Mars Map with its current crater-naming emphasis is an important part of the essential planning for landing people on Mars. That’s a BIG project. It’s daring. It’s fraught with problems that Mars One and its mission planners are working to reduce. It’s not like anything humanity has done before. It’s going to take ALL of Earth’s people to make it happen, even if many of us are only involved by paying our taxes or…naming craters on a map.

So, take a step into a future, one with Mars exploration. Check out Uwingu.com, and help future Mars explorers by contributing a bit of money and a name on a map. And, you’ll be helping astronomy and education research right here on Earth.  

While you’re there, go check out my crater names. One is TheSpacewriter and the other is Geodesium, for one of my favorite space music composers in the entire universe!  We’re both stargazers, so our crater names are in the Noctis Labyrinthus region, just off the Valles Marineris. They’re called Geodesium and TheSpacewriter, and they’re right next to each other, in the Labyrinth of the Night. See if you can find ‘em!

Finally, in a case of “reality follows art”, in 1996, my company created a show called SkyQuest where a little girl “explores Mars” in her backyard using a cardboard spaceship called “Mars 1″.  Nothing would please me more to see that dream become reality!