On October 15, 1997, the Cassini Orbiter was launched from Cape Canaveral. Cassini explored and collected data on Saturn, including gathering data on Saturn’s moons. Cassini found 20 moons that had never been discovered before, according to Carnegie Science, bringing Saturn’s moon total to 82 moons! The NASA Spacecraft ended its 20-year mission by crashing into Saturn in what must have been a glorious finale on Sept 15, 2017.
So Carnegie Science reached out to everyone to submit names for the newly discovered moons! Following the naming scheme for Saturn’s moons and depending on the inclination of the moons people are submitting names of giants from Inuit, Norse, and/or Gallic mythologies! Tomorrow, Dec 6, is the deadline and I’m very curious as to how they will choose which giants to name the moons after. I also wonder how they will choose who gets credit for naming each moon!
I had my homeroom class participate in this activity and what follows are the names submitted by my 6th-grade students (click here if you don’t see the tweets below):
