The International Astronomical Union is officially responsible for naming heavenly bodies. It may be time for it to give up that monopoly
THE ambitiously titled Spaceport America sits just outside Truth or Consequences, a small city in New Mexico that changed its name in 1950 to tie in with a popular radio quiz. Undignified? Perhaps. But there's a long list of Old West towns whose names come with a colourful story, often relating to how they were settled. Tombstone, Arizona, for example, was named by its founder, who had reputedly been warned the place would be the death of him.
Soon, suborbital joyrides will start departing from Spaceport America. Expeditions to explore, mine and settle nearby planets and asteroids are planned. There are even starry-eyed dreamers who have designs on escaping the solar system altogether – although such schemes are very unlikely to be realised any time soon (see "Take me to Alpha Centauri, one day").
All this activity is reflected in a shift in the public perception of space: from "heavenly realm" to everyday reality. So the pledge by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to heed public opinion when naming celestial bodies is in-keeping with the zeitgeist – even if its hand was forced by the good-natured outcry over its earlier decision to ignore a bid, led by Star Trek star William Shatner, to name a Plutonian moon "Vulcan" (see "Official planet namer listens to voice of the people").
Traditionalists will probably have welcomed the earlier decision and may rue the IAU's change of heart. Vulcan, the Roman god of fire whom the Trekkies professed, somewhat disingenuously, to be commemorating, is hardly an appropriate moniker for a body in the frigid outer wastes of the solar system. Alas, the chance to bestow the more classically appropriate name Persephone on a Plutonian companion seems to have passed.
Those trying to preserve the dignity of space may have qualms (see "Can we make a national heritage site on the moon?"). But the time for nominative prissiness may have passed too. For the moment, the IAU retains the final word, but with an ever-growing list of celestial bodies needing names, odds are that it will sooner or later have to cede power to the people.
Then, formality will give way to folklore. One day, perhaps, the space-born will swap yarns about how their settlements got their quaint names: continuing a tradition from the wild frontier to the final frontier.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Naming the final frontier"
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