Grant Developed from Uwingu’s New Mars Map Crater Naming Project

 Space project funding company Uwingu announced today a sponsorship of the 2014 Humans to Mars Summit (H2M) organized by Explore Mars. This sponsorship comes from funds raised from the public naming of craters on Uwingu’s new Mars map at www.uwingu.com. Uwingu has previously made grants to a wide range of organizations including Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), Astronomers Without Border (AWB), the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), the Galileo Teachers Training Program (GTTP), the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and the Mars One project.

Uwingu’s public engagement Mars Map Crater Naming project was established to help create a $10M fund for Uwingu grants and other efforts to support a wide range of new space projects with individual space researchers and educators hurt by budget cuts, as well as space companies and organizations like H2M. H2M-2014 will be held in Washington, D.C., April 22-24; find more about the meeting at http://H2M2014.ExploreMars.org .

Uwingu’s Mars map grandfathers in all the already named craters on Mars, opening the remainder up for naming by people around the globe. Prices for naming craters vary, depending on the size of the crater, and begin at $5 dollars. Uwingu makes a shareable Web link and a naming certificate available to each crater namer for each newly named crater. To date, people from over 78 countries around the world have named features on Uwingu’s Mars map. Earlier this month, the private Mars One humans to Mars project announced it will carry Uwingu’s new Mars map to Mars in 2018.

“We are extremely happy to have Uwingu supporting H2M,” commented Explore Mars executive director, Chris Carberry. “They have developed an innovative program with their Mars Map Crater Naming project that engages the public unlike any other. The Uwingu Fund is providing a valuable service of providing grants to space researchers, educators, and entrepreneurs.”

Dr. Alan Stern, the CEO of Uwingu added, “We’re incredibly proud to award our first meeting sponsorship grant to Explore Mars’ Humans to Mars Summit, a key gathering for the exploration of Mars. Given the popularity we’re seeing from people who want to help name craters on our new Mars map, we expect to generate many more grants as our Mars Map Crater Naming Project moves toward its goal of completing the naming of the over 500,000 unnamed, scientifically cataloged craters on Mars by the end of 2014, the 50th year of Mars exploration!”

Anyone around the world can participate Uwingu’s Mars Crater Map Naming Project at www.uwingu.com.

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About Uwingu: Uwingu (which means “sky” in Swahili, and is pronounced “oo-wing-oo”) was formed by a team of leading astronomers, planetary scientists, former space program executives, and educators. The company includes space historian and author Andrew Chaikin, space educator Dr. Emily CoBabe-Ammann, author and former museum science director Dr. David Grinspoon, planet hunter Dr. Geoff Marcy, planetary scientist and aerospace executive Dr. Teresa Segura, planetary scientist and former NASA science director Dr. Alan Stern, planetary scientist and CEO of the Planetary Science Institute, Dr. Mark Sykes, and space artists Jon Lomberg and Dan Durda. In 2012, Uwingu successfully concluded one of the 25 largest Indiegogo crowd-funding campaigns ever to launch an ongoing series of public engagement projects. Visit Uwingu’s web site at www.uwingu.com to learn more.

About Explore Mars: Explore Mars was created to advance the goal of sending humans to Mars within the next two decades. To further that goal, Explore Mars conducts programs and technical challenges to stimulate the development and/or improvement of technologies that will make human Mars missions more efficient and feasible. In addition, to embed the idea of Mars as a habitable planet, Explore Mars challenges educators to use Mars in the classroom as a tool to teach standard STEM curricula. Please visit Explore Mars at ExploreMars.org.