The Dragonfly landing zone on Titan gets an official name
Click for original image.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has now approved the name of the dune field on Titan where NASA’s Dragonfly helicopter mission will land when it arrives there in 2034.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the global body responsible for officially designating objects in space, has approved a name for the large dune field where Dragonfly will land on Titan: Ahmakiq Undae. The region consists of dunes and interdune areas to the south of Selk Crater, extending to the edge of a range of hills or mountains.
In the Mayan tradition, people appealed to the spirit Ahmakiq (pronounced “ah-mahk-eek”) to stop strong winds from damaging their crops. The name literally translates to the “one who locks up the wind,” and aligns with the IAU convention of naming dune fields – or undae, in Latin after gods and goddesses of wind. The Dragonfly team chose Ahmakiq from a list of IAU suggestions.
The image to the right shows the location of Ahmakiq Undae, in the northern low latitudes. The crater to the northeast of this dune field is 56-mile-wide Selk Crater, which the mission planners hope Dragonfly can eventually reach after landing.
The press release at the link also reports the continuing installation of Dragonfly’s wiring harness, in preparation for the launch in 2028.
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Starting to wonder if Greek and Roman names are merely used up, or outright verboten, in the space science community.
Probably both. I’m not normally given to sympathy for the IAU, but there are a lot of things needing names and, as solar system exploration progresses, more all the time. Earth has lots other extinct cultures that left records than just the Greeks and Romans. And it has a vast number of current and erstwhile barbarian tribes, each with its own bestiary of gods, goddesses, demons, devils and whatnot. I’m sympathetic to IAU strip miners plundering these otherwise defunct or insignificant religious traditions for usable nomenclature. The only viable alternative would pretty clearly be outright invention of names from whole cloth and any such exercise would pretty quickly collide with the pharmaceuticals industry, which also has a voracious need for new item names.
A lot of native names are used as a butter-up to get the rock-worshipers to quit opposing telescopes.
You think they’ll find that can opener?
I dunno.
Looks like a DWARF dune field to me . . .
I was going to suggest they name it after an American like Dolly Parton, Asteroid #10731 is already named “Dollyparton”. So there.
Any mission to Titan is great, but “Hydrocarbon lake shore” sounds like a more exciting landing spot than “Dune fields” and yay maybe a crater later.
Seeing this moon is a hydrocarbon paradise, I say it needs names like:
Mt. Adair
Lake Exxon
Shell Shoals
Cape of BP
I recall in the early days of this mission planning that the planners said they were going to stear clear of the lakes just in case… Now I think it will be be super cool to check out the dunes close up and personal… But I can’t help but think it’s a bit of a missed opportunity to check out the lakes and rivers… Even a small probe just to photograph the journey down ala Huygens piggy backing would be amazing.
Just throwing a fact out… Huygens had 2 separate data streams, but no redundancy, and one failed, so we actually lost half the data and images we could have received… I guess when your operating on shoe strings…. Beagle 2 springs to mind… Which you Bob still refuse to count as a soft landing on mars… Even tho it deployed all but one of its solar panels…
I completely understand dragonflies mission scientists… But considering the distance and time involved… And we will all be dead by the time another mission arrives… Stick a little probe on to check out those lakes!
Gonna land on Ahmakiq Undae
Hopefully, one day
‘Cause that will be a great day
Dragonfly’s time-in-the-sun day
Gonna land on Ahmakiq Undae
The Bangles (maybe)