Name a Martian crater for just $5 bucks

[Hum]

Starting Wednesday, anybody with an Internet connection and a few dollars to spare can give a moniker to one of the Red Planet's 500,000 or so unnamed craters, as part of a mapping project run by the space-funding company Uwingu.

"This is the first people's map of Mars, where anybody can play," said Uwingu CEO Alan Stern, a former NASA science chief who also heads the space agency's New Horizons mission to Pluto. "It's a very social thing."

Putting your stamp on Mars isn't free. Naming the smallest craters will set you back $5, with prices going up as crater size increases. Uwingu will use the money raised by the project ? which could be more than $10 million, if people name every available Martian crater ? to fund grants in space exploration, research and education, which is the company's stated chief purpose.

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[DocM]

Bogus scam, like those late night ads to name stars.