Atlas Trail
A path through the names things actually carry: the Greek deities behind the Roman planet names, a comet identified sixteen years before anyone could confirm it, a debris scenario known by four different names, and the call signs two cosmonauts used instead of their own.
Stop 1 of 7.
Celestial Objects
The Romans considered their god Saturnus the equivalent of the Greek god Cronus; modern Greek still calls the planet by that older name.
Stop 2 of 7.
Celestial Objects
Neptune, god of the sea in Roman myth, is identified with the Greek Poseidon, and shares its "ice giant" classification with Uranus rather than the true gas giants Jupiter and Saturn.
Stop 3 of 7.
Celestial Objects
Edmond Halley predicted this comet's return in 1705 using Newton's own gravitational mathematics; he did not live to see it confirmed, sixteen years after his death, on 25 December 1758.
Stop 4 of 7.
Concepts
A scenario with four names for the same problem, Kessler syndrome, the Kessler effect, collisional cascading, ablation cascade, describing how orbital debris collisions can breed more debris faster than it clears.
Stop 5 of 7.
Astronauts and Cosmonauts
Flew as "Kedr," cedar, on Vostok 1 in 1961, the radio call sign standing in for his own name for the first human spaceflight in history.
Stop 6 of 7.
Astronauts and Cosmonauts
Flew as "Chaika," seagull, on Vostok 6 two years later, becoming the first woman in space under a call sign later given to an asteroid in her honor.
Stop 7 of 7.
Astronauts and Cosmonauts
Born Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.; "Buzz," a childhood mispronunciation of "brother," did not become his legal first name until 1988, nearly two decades after Apollo 11.
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