Pay $5 and Name a Mars Crater after Yourself

Uwingu, a start-up company, offers earthlings an opportunity to connect with space exploration by asking internet users to name craters of Mars.

This space-funding company, for its mapping project aimed at raising funds for space research, has invited the public to name any one of the 500,000 unnamed scientifically catalogued Martian craters by paying $5.

"This is the first people's map of Mars, where anybody can play," said Uwingu CEO Alan Stern, a former NASA science chief who also heads the space agency's New Horizons mission to Pluto, according to Space.com. "It's a very social thing."

The price of putting your stamp on the smallest Martian crater is $5. The prices go up depending on the size.

"You can get involved in space exploration in a similar way-by helping to create a citizen's Mars map with names for all of the approximately 500,000 largest unnamed craters on Mars-the most Earth-like planet in our solar system," Uwingu wrote on its official site. "Just think-over almost 50 years of Mars exploration, only about 15,000 features have been named on Mars by all the astronomers in the world. But over 500,000 Martian craters mapped by NASA and European space missions have no names."

The company aims at naming all the unnamed Martian craters, which range from less than a kilometer to over 350 kilometers, and completing the new Martian map before 2015 that marks the 50^th anniversary year of humankind's first mission to Mars.  This project aims at generating over $10M in funds for space research and education, according to the press release.

"Every crater named  on this  public Mars map contributes to the Uwingu fund for space Research and education," added Stern in a news release.  "So name a crater on Mars-and make  an impact of your own!"              

This is not the first time the company is involved in naming celestial objects. Prior to this, the company raised funds by inviting the public to choose monikers for over 700 exoplanets.

Such name-selling campaigns gave rise to debate on whether people can buy the rights to name a planet. The International Astronomical Union (IAU), which is responsible for approving names of space bodies and their features, emphasizes on the unified naming procedure and states that private campaigns have no bearing on the official naming process, irrespective of the price paid by the users.