Concerns and considerations with the naming of Mars craters

In order to make sure that all scientists, educators and general public "speak the same language," astronomers from the International Astronomical Union have agreed on common standards for naming space objects, features or phenomena so that they can be easily located, described, and discussed. For instance, features on a given planet or satellite, receive names chosen from a particular theme. Only those features that are deemed to be of significance to science are given a name by the community, thus leaving other features to be named by future generations.

Although the present rules are that the general public cannot request that a particular feature is named, they can do so following a public invitation from a space agency or from the discoverers. This was the case for NASA's Magellan Venus mapping mission launched in 1989, for which the public was invited to offer the names of famous women for various features. A more recent example was the naming of the two most recently discovered satellites of Pluto in 2013, which was the result of a public vote. The selected names were approved in cooperation with the IAU and free and equal participation was offered to the general public. For Mars craters today, only their "discoverers," the space agencies, may take the initiative to involve the public in the naming process, in cooperation with the IAU and following international regulations.

In 1919, when the IAU was founded, it was given the official mission to establish internationally recognised planet and satellite nomenclature. The objective at the time was to standardise the various confusing systems of nomenclature for the Moon that were then in use. Since that time, the IAU has succeeded in constructing a single, reliable, official catalogue of surface feature names, thus enabling successful international public and scientific communication. The IAU played a key role in getting the USSR and the USA to agree on naming rules for lunar features even during the space race of the sixties.

Today, the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN), representing the worldwide astronomical community, provides a unique system of official names for Solar System objects (planetary surface features, natural satellites, dwarf planets, and planetary rings) for the benefit of the international science community, educators, and the general public. To see the existing accepted nomenclature please visit the IAU home page at Naming Astronomical Objects.

The IAU encourages entities wishing to promote space science and exploration to follow these internationally accepted rules and explain them as part of their space education and exploration programmes.