Students Have Chance to Name Lunar Camera

A Hawaiʻi nonprofit is giving students throughout the islands the chance to make their mark on the moon.

The International Lunar Observatory Association invites all Hawaiʻi classrooms to participate in naming one of two lunar cameras that will be taken to the moon later this year through ILOA Hawaiʻi’s ILO-X mission.

Through May 26, ILOA Hawaiʻi asks teachers to engage their students in lunar exploration and propose a name for a narrow-field camera that will be taken to the moon. The organization will accept one name per form and an unlimited number of names per class.

“Every proposed name must be accompanied by a reason for that name,” said a press release from ILOA Hawai’i. “We would like this name to reflect the aloha and kuleana we feel towards the people here who support us every day.”

Photos and videos to support a classroom’s proposal are suggested but not required. Classes must be located in Hawaiʻi to qualify and can be from a public, private, charter or even home school.

The camera’s name will be decided from classroom submissions by a panel of respected people located in Hawaiʻi.

The narrow field-of-view instrument, which is expected to achieve the main goal of the ILO-X mission objective of capturing images of the center of the Milky Way galaxy in high-resolution, is one of two cameras that will be placed on the moon’s surface. The other is a wide-field camera. Both were designed and built in Canada by Canadensys Aerospace Corp. and will be launched from Florida via Intuitive Machines IM-1 Lander aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

“Their journey is a reflection of the international endeavor astronomy truly encompasses and is a shining example of Hawaiʻi astronomy collaborations with people from around the world,” the press release said.

ILOA Hawaiʻi, headquartered in Waimea, is an inter-global nonprofit enterprise that was incorporated in 2007. The primary goal of ILOA is to expand human understanding of the cosmos through observation from the moon ⚊ with aloha.

For more information about the naming contest, including how to participate, click here. For more information about ILOA Hawaiʻi, click here.