The Astronomycast Episode 425 Naming spacecraft.

Welcome to Astronomycast, a weekly fact-space journey through the cosmos, where we help

you understand only what we know, but how we know what we know.

My name is Fraser Kane, I'm the publisher of the universe today, and with me is Dr.

Pamela Gay, the director of Cosmicquest.

Hey Pamela, how you doing?

I'm doing well.

How are you doing, Fraser?

Good, but a little sad at the time that we are recording this show, we do not know what

happened to the lander from the little lander that could from Europe.

It's true, we're both glued to our various feeds, waiting to see if little chaperalea

decides to call home.

It's true to be such a good day.

There's three separate spacecraft carrying human beings in space right now, plus a new

mission arriving at Mars.

It's a very good day for space.

Well for human space, exomars did successfully implant itself in orbits, so we have one new

orbiter going round and round Mars, but it's the surface where you really want to be to

do cool stuff like digging and seeing what's in the dirt.

Well, let's get on with the show, because it's kind of relevant.

So have you ever noticed that spacecraft missions have some pretty cool names?

How does anyone decide what to call these things anyway?

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