Astronomer Brad Smith says Mars’ Mount Sharp Not Really Called That

NASA scientists are preparing the robotic rover Curiosity to begin exploring the surface of Mars.

Earlier this week, the craft landed on the red planet, in Gale Crater near a peak some have called Mount Sharp.

Astronomer Brad Smith, of the International Astronomical Union, explains to anchor Lisa Mullins how geographical features on Mars are named.

Smith also talks about why “Mount Sharp”–near where NASA’s rover Curiosity landed — is not an official moniker.

The mountain at the center of Gale Crater is called “Aeolis Mons.”

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: Scientists with NASA remain focused on Mars today. They’re getting the rover called Curiosity ready for its first journey across the Martian surface. It landed on the planet early this week. NASA says the initial destination will be the base of Mount Sharp in the middle of Gale Crater. Now, that got us thinking. Where do these Martian place names come from? Who’s got the authority to weigh features on another planet? Well, it turns out that job falls to the International Astronomical Union. Brad Smith heads a working group for planetary nomenclature on Mars at the IAU. For starters, he says Mount Sharp is not the official name of the mountain, it was NASA’s idea.

Brad Smith: The people with the Mars science lander knew that they were going to be landing in Gale Crater and they knew that they had this big mountain that they wanted to ignore and they asked to name it Mount Sharp after Robert Sharp, a very well known geologist. But the way that we name mountains on Mars is to give it the Latin term Mons and then the name comes from the area that was mapped out by the early telescopic observers before the space age; in this case it was called Aeolis. So they were told that they could give it whatever nickname they wanted to, that we’d have no control over that, but this name Mount Sharp would never appear in the official IAU database. It would not appear on official maps.

Mullins: Okay, so Aeolis, this large darkish area on Mars, and that’s where we got the name Aelois. Mons, which we call Mount Sharp, which is in the middle of Gale Crater. Now, the craters are key here because it turns out that I guess Mars is pocked by craters and each crater has a name. Do you know if 100% of the craters there do have names?

Smith: No, quite the opposite. There are perhaps a thousand at the most, maybe a few thousand features on Mars that are named — craters, valleys, mountains, that sort of thing — but there are a 100,000 features on Mars that have not been named and never will be named probably. We only apply a name if it is a feature of a specific scientific interest, one where a researcher might want to refer to it in a paper or in a presentation that he’s making. Now, craters on Mars, large craters on Mars are named for people who have either contributed greatly to the science of Mars or even to the lore of Mars. For example, H.G. Wells is on Mars, Orson Wells, there’s a crater named Orson Wells on Mars.

Mullins: Only fitting.

Smith: And of course, for scientists, Sagan, Carl Sagan is, there’s a crater named for him on Mars.

Mullins: Also for something that’s smaller than, than like 36 miles or 60 kilometers?

Smith: There we needed a category that was almost exhaustible. So we chose small towns and villages from around the world, places with populations less than 100,000. That’s an almost inexhaustible supply. And we’re not commemorating these places, we’re just using their names on Mars. For example, we have a crater named Gander from Newfoundland, and Lexington, MA is on Mars.

Mullins: No, seriously? That’s very close to where I am right now. Wait, before you go on, Lexington, like why? Because it’s where the big battles were fought in the Revolutionary War?

Smith: Well, that’s true, but again, there’s no intent toward commemoration. When a request comes in I will just go to a map and I’ll pick a town, check to make sure the population is less than 100,000 and then submit that as a name for the crater.

Mullins: But you’re the one who kind of puts your finger on the map and says, hey, how about…Yat. Did you say Yat earlier?

Smith: Yat in Niger, yeah,

Mullins: Oh.

Smith: and the people living in the little village called Nif in Micronesia might be surprised to find out that their town has a crater named for it on Mars.

Mullins: Why did you come up with Nif and Yat?

Smith: Well, I’m trying to be highly diversified. I’m trying to get all of the nations of the world represented on Mars.

Mullins: Now, you sound like a very humble man. You don’t sound like you’d have any kind of messianic complex, but like can you help but feel kind of bloated about this?

Smith: Well, no, I mean I’ve been doing this since 1973. There are other people who have the same kind of position that I have for other planets. For example, there’s someone who is looking after the craters on Mercury, the moon, but it’s a fun job, I’ll say that. It’s been getting a little bit more hectic lately because of the increase in the amount of work that’s being done on Mars, so we’re getting more requests than we used to for names, but I can keep up with it.

Mullins: Brad Smith, very nice to talk with you.

Smith: Nice to talk with you.

Mullins: Brad Smith thinks up names of places on Mars for the International Astronomical Union. He’s in Santa Fe. We’ve got a slideshow of Curiosity’s latest photos from Gale Crater, sorry, no Martians yet. Check things out at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.