Uwingu and eBay Auctioning Naming Rights to Biggest Unnamed Crater on Mars
eBay bidders auction to name largest unnamed crater on Uwingu’s Mars map, proceeds to benefit the National Space Society, the Mars One project, and more
Looking for an out of this world holiday gift opportunity or an incredible marriage proposal or anniversary idea? For the next 10 days, eBay and Uwingu have partnered to give anyone the opportunity to naming rights for the biggest unnamed crater on Uwingu’s Mars map—a first of its kind auction.
With over 14,000 craters named on it by the public in 2014 alone—more than ten times the number named by scientists in the past 50 years, Uwingu Mars’s map is becoming a de facto standard as the most complete map of Martian craters.
The huge, ancient crater, located at 25.1 deg south latitude and 327.3 deg east longitude on Mars is 627 km (391 miles) in diameter—as big as the state of Florida; it is bigger than 60% of the countries on Earth.
As with all Uwingu efforts, 50% of the proceeds will go to Uwingu Fund sales to support space exploration, research, and education grants. For the eBay auction, the National Space Society will be supported via eBay’s Giving Works program. The balance of the Uwingu Fund proceeds from the auction will benefit other grant recipients of the Uwingu Fund, including the Mars One project and other efforts to further space education, exploration, and research. See examples of past Uwingu grants at http://www.uwingu.com/the-uwingu-fund/currently-funded-projects/
The name given to the crater by the eBay auction winner will forever be recorded on our new map of Mars, and then sent to Mars by the Mars One project The winning winner will also receive a framed certificate of naming, two (2) VIP passes to the Mars Insight mission launch—NASA’s next Mars launch, and a handsome desk globe of Mars valued at over $300.
“Our goals at Uwingu are to get more people excited about space exploration, and to fund space exploration, research, and education projects via this new private sector way,” said Uwingu’s CEO, planetary scientist Alan Stern. “There are still almost 500,000 unnamed craters on our people’s map of Mars.”
In addition to bidding on the eBay auctioned crater, enthusiasts, gift givers, and supporters are encouraged to go online at www.uwingu.com and support Uwingu’s goals by naming smaller and mid-sized craters as holiday gifts to loved ones, friends, and coworkers. Prices range from $5 to $5,000 depending on crater size.
Uwingu founder and CEO, Dr. Alan Stern is available for interviews about this auction immediately. Contact him HERE.
How can you sell something you cannot own or claim??
NASA and the IAU dissociates itself entirely from the commercial practice of “selling” fictitious star names or “real estate” on other planets or moons in the Solar System. Accordingly, NASA and the IAU maintains no list of the (several competing) enterprises in this business in individual countries of the world.
Hello Cherei,
Uwingu is creating a new map of Mars, with names contributed by the public. The names on our map don’t convey any ownership of Mars to the namers, as our Terms of Use statement says.
We think that there will be many maps of Mars in the future, just as there are many maps of the sky today.
We aren’t seeking approval from others to place our crowdsourced names on our map, but we do expect that our soon to be much more complete map will be increasingly used over time by future Mars missions, researchers,and educators. To-date, we have received confirmation from Mars One and Explore Mars that they will take and use our map. More details are below:
http://www.uwingu.com/2014/06/uwingu-partners-with-explore-mars-on-time-capsule-to-mars-initiative/
http://www.uwingu.com/2014/03/private-mars-one-space-mission-to-use-uwingu-mars-maps/
Alisha McFarland
uwingu