NASA Wants Your Help Naming Pluto's Undiscovered Geological Features

​NASA's ​New Horizons mission—the first to visit Pluto—will make its closest encounter with the dwarf planet ​in mid-July. But by May 14, it will start capturing images of Pluto and its moon Charon better than any we've had before. That means we'll start to be able to see clear details of every ridge, mountain, and valley on our former ninth planet and its satellite. And all of those geological features are going to need names.

That's where you come in. Although the New Horizons team gets final say when registering the names with the International Astronomical Union, they need some help coming up with ideas. They've created a list of ten categories:

• Historic explorers (i.e. Lewis & Clark)
• Space missions and crafts (i.e. Challenger)
• Scientists and engineers (i.e. Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto)
• Fictional explorers and travelers (i.e. Captain Ahab)
• Fictional worlds (i.e. the Shire)
• Fictional vessels (i.e. the Argo)
• Exploration authors and artists (i.e. J.R.R. Tolkein)
• Underworlds (i.e. the Abyss)
• Travelers to the underworld (i.e. Virgil) 
• Underworld beings (i.e. Hades)

The New Horizons team plans to tie each category to a different geological feature type—small hills might all be named after underworld beings, for example—and they need a bunch of options to chose from for each category, so they're enlisting the help of the public.

While naming features after space and literary explorers seems like a no-brainer, the fixation on the netherworlds (Pluto was the Greek god of the underworld) make for some particularly ​fun, dark options.

You've got until April 7 to suggest a name and vote your favorites to the top of the list at ​ourpluto.org. If you're the kind of person who nerds out on both underworld mythology and space exploration, this may be the best, if not only, chance to combine your two passions.