| ERIE
CRATER? NASA LIMITS NAMING RIGHTS ON MARS Tuesday, January 27, 2004 NEWS 06A By Mike Lafferty |
 NASA
Scientists named this rock after the
Adirondack
Mountains in
New York.
NASA has decided to name craters for lakes and mountains for
famous ships. Rocks, however, are up for grabs. The Mars rover has sent
back
images of many such features. |
Sleepy Hollow popped up on the first Martian road map before bleary-eyed scientists were awake enough to realize they should have rules for naming the planet's features.
It won't happen again."We're going to name all craters with lake names and all the mountains with historic ship names,'' said Ohio State University scientist Rongxing Li, who is part of a team mapping the rover Spirit's path on Mars.
And he hopes to name one of them for the lake closest to home: Erie.
Sleepy Hollow, a shallow crater near Spirit's landing site, was named by scientists scanning early images beamed back from the rover. NASA public-relations people, hungry for anything that would help them sell the alien terrain to taxpayers, liked it, and the name stuck.
Since then, NASA has declared a moratorium on naming major landmarks, Li said from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Naming rights are a perk of exploration.
"If we see something interesting on surface, it's up to us to name it,'' said Geoffrey Landis, a scientist with NASA-Glenn Research Center, near Cleveland.
Landis, who also is in Pasadena, helped design the solar panels for Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, which landed early Sunday on Mars.
"The names we come up with are informal. We need to have names for the things to talk about them,'' said Steve Squyres, the chief scientist for the mission.
Some names, such as Titanic, don't stand a chance.
"That's too sad,'' Li said of the ill-fated ocean liner.
A NASA public-relations official said he was unaware of any directive preventing the naming of large landmarks. Either way, rocks are fair game, and at least four in the rover's vicinity already have been named: Sparky, Sashimi, Sushi and Adirondack.
"Sushi looked like a rolled-up sushi,'' Li said.
On Jan. 19, the rover rolled 10 feet to Adirondack, a rock roughly the size of a football that was named for the mountain range in New York. The word Adirondack is American Indian and is interpreted by some to mean "they of the great rocks.''
Scientists think it is made of a volcanic rock called basalt.
The next day, the rover extended its robotic arm to the rock and began to analyze it using alpha particles and X-rays.
Sashimi and Sushi were bypassed when scientists decided they didn't have good surfaces for grinding.
For major landmarks, such as mountains, huge craters and the canals earthlings once believed Martians dug, there are forms and protocols. The International Astronomical Union has to approve each name.
"We don't have ridiculous names or offensive names,'' said NASA spokesman John Sepikas.
Landis said there will be no Mount Landis, even if the International Astronomical Union would approve it.
"It's considered poor form to name things after yourself,'' he said.
mlafferty@dispatch.com