Back in October, I shared with you two opportunities for the public to contribute to the naming of key scientific instruments. Well, the results are in, and I’d like to hear your thoughts on the new monikers.
The Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory twin spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon now have the names EBB and FLOW, suggested by a fourth-grade class from Montana. // Illustration by NASA/JPL-Caltech
The first contest dealt with the twin
Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft. Now in orbit around the Moon, the pair had the less-than-creative names GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B. But with the help of Nina DiMauro’s fourth-grade class at Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Montana, they’ll now go by
EBB and FLOW, respectively. The GRAIL team received submissions from more than 900 schools from 45 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington D.C., but principal investigator Maria Zuber said DiMaruo’s class stood out because the students were inspired by the Moon and gravity to think about how our natural satellite influences Earth (its gravity causes the ebb and flow of the tides). “GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B are on a journey just like the Moon is on a journey around Earth,” the students’ essay said.
The expanded capabilities of the updated Very Large Array in Socorro, New Mexico, occasioned the facility to be renamed the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array after the founder or radio astronomy. // Photo by NRAO/AUI
Unlike GRAIL, the other contest, which involved the
Very Large Array (VLA), resulted in a more traditional new name. More than a decade ago, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) began an expansion project to replace the VLA’s original, 1970s-vintage electronics with modern, state-of-the-art equipment. As the VLA update nears completion, the NRAO felt that the new facility needed an original name to reflect the array’s 21st-century power. It appears scientists and contest entrants disagreed, though. Of the 16,223 different names submitted, many kept some form of the VLA moniker intact. So, in the end, the NRAO choose the
Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, which honors the founder of radio astronomy. For simplicity, its nickname will be the Jansky VLA.
So there you have it: creative new names for twin spacecraft and a traditional label for a telescope array. What do you think of the results? Would you have gone more customary for GRAIL and maybe less so for the VLA? Or do you like the new names? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.