Mom’s name can be put on Mars. Image of elongated crater called “Spirit of St. Louis,” taken by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. (Photo: NASA)
This is guaranteed to be the most unique Mother’s Day gift mom has ever received.
For as little as $5, anyone can through Uwingu, a Boulder-based company focused on space education and exploration.
Uwingu was founded by planetary scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder. (Stern is the principal investigator of that will do a fly-by of Pluto this summer.)
Crater prices , depending on crater size, and half of the revenues go to the Uwingu Fund that helps support space research, exploration and education. And, Stern said Friday, bringing the public into the fold helps achieve several aspects of Uwingu’s mission.
“Our two goals at Uwingu are to touch people personally with the excitement of space exploration, and to raise money for the Uwingu Fund for space research and education,” Stern said. “Crater naming really does touch people while it raises money. Last year we raised over $250K from crater naming!”
Uwingu is offering special Mothers On Mars! (MOM) certificates through Sunday. (via Uwingu Facebook)
Over the last 5 decades, the International Astronomical Union has named close to 15,000 features on Mars, all which were added to Uwingu’s Mars map. That leaves about 590,000 unnamed, scientifically cataloged craters, according to Uwingu’s website.
So, in 2014, they launched the crater-naming project. Since then, people have let their creativity go wild, said Ellen Butler, Uwingu’s chief marketing officer.
“We love seeing the way families celebrate, memorialize, and share personal milestones together — wedding engagements, picking Mars crater coordinates that correspond with their first date location, celebrating the birth of a child, honoring college graduations of grandchildren …” she said. “I even had somebody name a crater for ME! He was really pleased with my customer service support.”
It’s hard for Butler to pick a favorite story. Among them are a man who named a crater “” to propose to his girlfriend, and a fourth-grade teacher in Abu Dhabi who got her students excited about space by .
Then there’s the “Uwingu superfan” in Japan who actually completely recreated … with crater naming.
That fan, who also , then went on to write a novel about Uwingu Mars during NaNiWriMo, the annual month-long writer challenge.
As of February 2015, the Uwingu Fund has about $128K in it, Butler estimates, about $111,500 of which has been spoken for. About $17,000 is still earmarked for the next call for grants. Among those supported by the fund are organizations and projects like Astronomers Without Borders, the Allen Telescope Array at SETI and Students for the Exploration and Development of Space at the University of Colorado, according to Uwingu’s website.
“With NASA budget cutbacks it is increasingly important to find new ways to fund these scientist, projects, educators and students,” Butler said.
Any craters purchased for Mother’s Day between now through Sunday, May 10, will get a . And the 50 largest craters will receive a .
Uwingu’s Mars map, which is available for anyone to use, will head to the Red Planet aboard the .
