In the wake of their involvement in one of the biggest real-life space exploration events in recent memory, the team behind the NASA New Horizons probe are drawing inspiration from fiction to informally name the various features found on Pluto’s moon Charon.
According to Space.com and Discovery News reports, US space agency scientists have decided to name some of the craters and other geological features on the largest of the dwarf planet’s five known moons in honor of people and places in Star Wars, Star Trek, and other classics.
From George Lucas’ iconic series of Jedi Knights and Sith Masters, we have the Skywalker Crater, (Leia) Organa Crater and, of course, Vader Crater. From Gene Roddenberry’s beloved franchise, we have craters named for Enterprise crewmembers Kirk, Spock, Sulu, and Uhura.
Of course, that’s not all. Fans of the long-running UK science fiction show Doctor Who will be thrilled to see the Tardis Chasma (named after the Doctor’s time-travelling machine) along with the Galifrey Macula (named in honor of his home planet). Sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke, Alien, Firefly, and JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings are also recognized.
Names are unofficial (for now)
The colorful sci-fi inspired names are in stark contrast to those predominantly used to name the features on Pluto, which tend to focus on real-life explorers. For instance, Tombaugh Regio was named after Clyde Tombaugh, the US astronomer who discovered Pluto, while Sputnik Planum was named after the well-known Soviet satellite that kicked off the space age.
At this point, the Charon names are unofficial, as the International Astronomical Union (IAU) is the only body in the world allowed to assign official name to the objects in space, according to Tech Times. The preliminary names used on both the moon and the dwarf planet have been sent to the agency for approval however, so with luck, Serenity Chasma will soon be legit.
The proposed names were selected by public vote through the Seti Institute’s Our Pluto website. The organization said that they had received “so many great suggestions that winnowing down the list was a real challenge. Nevertheless, we limited our proposal to about 10 names in each theme so as not to overwork the IAU nomenclature working group too heavily.”
(Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)
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