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Change is needed to diversify space science — and it starts with a name

The current naming conventions for planetary features exacerbate the underrepresentation in space science of women and marginalized groups.

Apollo 11 may have first physically put man on the Moon in 1969, but man’s first appearance on the Moon happened long before that. In 1635, Giovanni Battista Riccioli started naming lunar craters, adopting the names of famous scientists for his discoveries—a convention still maintained by the IAU today. Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo were first in a trend of male ‘occupation’ of space. Today, 1,578 lunar craters have received names and just 2% of these are named after women. The same naming convention has been adopted for large craters on Mars; I found that women feature less than 2% of the time.

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  1. School of Physical Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    A. R. Lennox

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Lennox, A.R. Change is needed to diversify space science — and it starts with a name.
Nat Astron (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-02124-4

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  • Published: 30 October 2023

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-02124-4

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