TN Tech Students Name Martian Crater

Tennessee Tech students and researchers named a Martian crater Garu.

Jeannette Wolak is the assistant professor of Earth Sciences.

“We have a grant at Tennessee Tech University to map part of Mars that hasn’t been mapped before, and the map will be very high resolution,” Wolak said. “So it included a crater in the middle of the map that didn’t have a name. The United States Geological Survey, which puts together all the maps for Mars, asked us to name the crater.”

NASA-funded the grant that allows students and researchers to map a part of Mars.

Wolak said guidelines apply to naming objects in space.

“For this one, craters that are less than sixty kilometers in diameter are named after small communities or towns that have less than 10 thousand people,'” Wolak said. “In general the community wants names that represent the diversity across Earth, so they ask us to pick names from underrepresented countries.”

The students found particular significance in Garu, Wolak said.

“We thought about a couple of different names but this one had particular significance because it is a small town on the edge of the Sahara Desert,” Wolak said. “They have very little water in that area. So we thought it was really fitting for Mars to be named after that particular community.”

One of the faculty members worked on the water issue in Garu, Ghana, Wolak said.

Wolak said she hopes for the map to be published in 2019 or 2020.