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.