NASA asked people to name its new Uranus probe. It went as well as you’d expect
NASA wants to probe Uranus. (Getty)
NASA asked for suggestions for the name of its new Uranus probe, and naturally, chaos ensued.
The Uranus Orbiter and Probe is a project that NASA hopes to launch in 2030. It’s a good idea; asking the public to give that probe a name, however, is not.
The mission plans to spend, as the title suggests, several years orbiting the seventh planet from the Sun. It would potentially send a probe down through its atmosphere to the surface.
This could tell us a lot about the makeup of Uranus, giving us vital information about the ‘ice giant’ and further advancing our knowledge of the solar system.
And already, it’s proved an important point: that giving the public free reign to name a Uranus probe is a sure-fire way to receive a load of butt jokes.
Atop an official-looking poster, The Ice Giant Missions Twitter account tweeted: “We want to know, what would YOU name the #Uranus Orbiter & Probe Mission? #letsgoback #icegiants #namethemission.”
There was:
Voyager – @NSFVoyager2 ?
Cassini-Huygens – @CassiniSaturn ?
New Horizons – @NASANewHorizons ?
Juno – @NASAJuno ?
Perseverance – @NASAPersevere ?We want to know, what would YOU name the #Uranus Orbiter & Probe Mission? ⚪️?️#letsgoback #icegiants #namethemission pic.twitter.com/o6vLLgdvMo
— Ice Giant Missions ? (@ExploreIGO) September 10, 2022
What could possibly go wrong?
Just two days later, the Ice Giant Missions shared a list of some of the “insanely creative” suggestions it had received.
The #icegiants community is insanely creative ? & hilarious ?
Here are the two lists:
1. Seriously cool name suggestions for the #Uranus mission ⚪️?️ (so difficult to choose!)
2. Some of the best jokes people came up with ?
Which is your favorite from each list?#letsgoback pic.twitter.com/MupJ2WMqBz— Ice Giant Missions ? (@ExploreIGO) September 12, 2022
Here are a few of our favourites:
- B.U.T.T (Better Uranus Telemetry Tracking)
- Bootylicious
- Deep Dive
- Pegassus
- Operation Butt Plug
- Prostate Exam
- R.E.C.T.U.M (Research Education Charging Towards Uranus Mission)
- Shinya-Wolff (the inventors of the colonscopy)
- Touranus
- Uranal Probe
Honourable mention goes to ‘Probie McProbeface’.
There were also – shockingly – some serious names, and to the people who submitted those, we salute you.
They included:
- Boreas – the Greek god of the North Wind and bringer of Winter
- Caelus – Roman god of the skies
- E.S.C.H.R – standing for Explanatory Space Craft for Herschel Expanded Report; it (almost) spells ‘Escher’ to highlight the planet’s wonky axis tilt
- Hermes – the Greek god of adventure and messengers
- Odin – the Norse god who defeats the Ice Giants
- Ymir – an ice giant in Norse mythology
We can only imagine that NASA will take their name from this second list, but we applaud whoever submitted ‘Enema’ for trying.
