The public asked for the name of NASA’s mission to explore Uranus – and the answers were hilarious

SPACE fans had a social media day after being asked to provide names for NASA’s proposed Uranus probe.

On Saturday, an unofficial Twitter account promoting the space agency’s upcoming missions asked its followers for suggestions.

bill, Ice Giant missionsshared some of the funniest responses as streams of people reached out with mocking suggestions.

Referring to the now infamous Booty McBoatface Online poll, one of the most popular answers was “Probey McProbeface”.

Others included “Bootylicious”, “Deep Dive”, “Touranus” and a hint of a joke in The Simpsons in the form of “Seymore Butts”.

Some applicants got a little more creative with acronyms that make up rough words.

Popular among them were “Advanced New Uranus Space Mission (ANUS)” and “Better Uranus Telemetry Tracking (BUTT)”.

But while the probe headed for Uranus is ripe for raunchy jokes, most of the responses were heartfelt suggestions.

Among them were “Loki” and “Odin”, gods in Norse mythology who defeated the ice giants.

“Hermes,” the Greek god of adventure and travel, was also singled out by one space fan.

At the moment, NASA has no concrete plans to return to Uranus, but a mission to the distant ice giant is not out of the question.

Earlier this year, a panel of experts from the US National Academies recommended a mission to Uranus in its ten-year report to NASA.

The space agency last visited the planet in 2015, when its New Horizons spacecraft made a quick flyby.

NASA has previously sent special probes to explore Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

While the parody poll that ran over the weekend was just for fun, asking for science mission names online has become a popular way to generate public interest and engagement in recent years.

In 2016, an infamous online poll went wrong after voters were asked to name a £200m research vessel.

The UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) asked netizens to submit proposals and vote on them.

However, the poll backfired when the winning name put forward by a member of the public was “Botty McBoatface”.

The proposal received 124,109 votes after being introduced as a joke.

The second most popular choice, Poppy-Mai, had 34,371, with Henry Worsley third on 15,231.

The fourth choice was the no less comedic RRS It’s Bloody Cold Here.

Much to the voters’ disappointment, NERC followed through on its promise and named the ship “RRS David Attenborough” instead.

As a consolation, the small robotic underwater vehicle launched from the new vessel has been named Boaty McBoatface.

2

We pay for your stories! Got a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk