Research Vessel Name Generator
Science ship names for deep space and deep sea
Generate research vessel names for a deep-space survey ship, a planetary science cruiser or an ocean research ship in a story: namesake names like Hypatia's Lantern and Leavitt's Candle, prefixed names like ISV Long Baseline and RV Open Question, and dry lab humor like Peer Review and Grant Deadline.
About research vessel names
Research ships are named differently from warships. Where a navy reaches for Dauntless and Vengeance, a science fleet reaches for people, virtues and tools. The real tradition set the pattern: HMS Beagle and HMS Challenger carried naturalists around the world, and modern ocean ships carry prefixes such as RV (research vessel) and RRS (Royal Research Ship, the British form). Science fiction kept the habit, so a survey ship in a story sounds right when it is named for a scientist, an ideal or the thing it was built to measure.
This list of 1,000 names leads with spacecraft and keeps a smaller share for ocean and polar ships. It mixes namesake names built on a discovery (Leavitt's Candle, Eratosthenes' Shadow, Kelvin's Wake), full names of scientists who died decades or centuries ago (Caroline Herschel, Wang Zhenyi), virtues of inquiry (Patient Observer, Honest Doubt), instruments and methods (Parallax, Blink Comparator), survey targets (Enceladus Plume, Kirkwood Gap), seabirds and sea animals, Latin mottoes, and dry lab humor (Reviewer Two, Further Study Needed).
ISV, SRV and XRV are made-up prefixes for fiction: read them as interstellar survey vessel, stellar research vessel and exo-research vessel, or define your own. A few entries are real research ships or ships from film and television; the FAQ below names them.
How to choose research vessel names
- Match the name to the mission. A stellar survey suits a namesake from astronomy (Herschel's Sweep, Cannon's Sequence), a biology or sample-return ship suits a naturalist (Wallace's Line, Merian's Butterflies), and an ice-moon or ocean ship suits polar and deep-sea words (Polynya, Marine Snow).
- Use a prefix to show who runs the ship. RV and RRS belong to real ocean research fleets, so they suit present-day and near-future stories; ISV, SRV and XRV are made up and can stand for whatever your setting needs.
- Give the small craft small names. A tender, a launch or a probe carrier reads well as Little Sounding, Paper Boat or Dandelion Clock beside a mother ship with a grander name.
- Save the jokes for a crew that would make them. Peer Review, Grant Deadline and Within Error Bars suit a university ship or a tired survey crew, and they land harder when the rest of the fleet is named soberly.
- Before you name a ship after a real scientist in published work, read up on the person. A namesake is a small tribute, and it works best when the reader can look up the discovery behind it.
Frequently asked questions
What are good names for a research vessel?
Research ships are usually named for scientists, for virtues of inquiry or for the tools of the trade. From this list, try Hypatia's Lantern, Kepler's Wake, Patient Observer, RV Far Sounding or ISV Long Baseline for a serious ship, and Null Hypothesis or Assume a Spherical Cow for a crew with a sense of humor.
Which names here are real ships or ships from fiction?
A small share. The real research and survey ships are RV Polarstern, JOIDES Resolution, Glomar Challenger, HMS Beagle, HMS Challenger, RV Calypso, RRS Discovery, RRS James Clark Ross, RRS Ernest Shackleton, RRS James Cook, RRS William Scoresby, RV Knorr, RV Atlantis, RV Vema, RV Meteor, RV Sonne, RV Tangaroa, RV Investigator, RV Maria S. Merian, RV Kilo Moana, RV Mirai, RV Araon, Chikyu, Vityaz, Fram, Belgica, Pourquoi-Pas?, HMS Erebus, HMS Terror, HMS Rattlesnake and Galathea. USS Grissom and USS Equinox are Star Trek science vessels and USCSS Prometheus is from the film Prometheus. The other names follow the same tradition, and some of them are also carried by real craft, because research fleets and space agencies honor the same people and ideas: Fridtjof Nansen, Rachel Carson and Alexander von Humboldt are also real research ships, Curiosity and Perseverance are Mars rovers, and a plain word such as a bird name may match a real boat as well.
What do RV, RRS and ISV mean?
RV stands for research vessel and is used by many real ocean research fleets. RRS is Royal Research Ship, the prefix of British research ships such as RRS Discovery. ISV, SRV and XRV are not real-world ship prefixes: on this page they read as interstellar survey vessel, stellar research vessel and exo-research vessel, as in ISV Light Curve or XRV Sample Return.
Are the scientists in the namesake names real?
Yes. The namesakes are real scientists, naturalists and mathematicians who died decades or centuries ago, from Eratosthenes and Zhang Heng to Henrietta Leavitt and Emmy Noether, and no living person is used. Most names point at something the person is known for, such as Leavitt's Candle for her work on stars as standard candles or Hutton's Unconformity for the rock formation he described. Check the history yourself before you lean on it in published work.
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All 1,000 research vessel names
A: 60 names
- A Closer Look
- A Long Way to Look
- A Question of Scale
- Ab Initio
- Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi
- Absorption Line
- Abyssal Plain
- Accepted With Changes
- Acknowledgments Section
- Ad Fontes
- Ada Lovelace
- Adélie
- Agnesi's Curve
- Agulhas Ring
- Airglow
- Alexander von Humboldt
- Alfred Russel Wallace
- Algol Minimum
- Alhazen's Aperture
- All-Nighter
- Almanac Maker
- Altair Transect
- Analemma
- Anansi's Web
- Ancient Air
- Andromeda Approach
- Anecdotal Evidence
- Anemometer
- Anglerfish
- Annie Jump Cannon
- Annie Maunder
- Anning's Shore
- Antares Watch
- Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
- Any Questions
- Aperture Synthesis
- Aphelion
- Apparent Horizon
- Apsis Line
- Arc Second
- Archimedes' Lever
- Archivist
- Arctic Tern
- Arcturus Rising
- Argelander's Steps
- Argo
- Argonaut
- Argus Panoptes
- Ariadne's Thread
- Aristarchus' Wager
- Armillary
- Aryabhata's Turn
- Ask Again Tomorrow
- Assume a Spherical Cow
- Astrolabe
- Astronomical Unit
- Audubon's Folio
- Aurora Australis Watcher
- Avogadro's Number
- Axial Seamount
B: 58 names
- Babbage's Difference
- Back by Supper
- Back of the Envelope
- Ballast and Patience
- Balmer Series
- Banks' Florilegium
- Banneker's Almanac
- Baret's Passage
- Barnard's Runner
- Bates' Mimic
- Bathyscaphe
- Bathysphere
- Bay of Rainbows
- Beachcomber
- Beacon Setter
- Beat Frequency
- Beaufort Gyre
- Beaufort's Scale
- Because It Is There
- Beebe's Descent
- Belgica
- Bell Jar
- Beluga
- Beneath Europa
- Benefit of the Doubt
- Benguela Upwelling
- Benjamin Banneker
- Bessel's Parallax
- Better Question
- Beyond the Catalog
- Beyond the Scope
- Bioluminescent
- Birdwatcher
- Biruni's Measure
- Black Smoker
- Blame the Sensor
- Blank Spot on the Chart
- Blind Trial
- Blink Comparator
- Blue Whale
- Bok Globule
- Bolometer
- Boltzmann's Constant
- Botanist's Satchel
- Bougainville's Bloom
- Bow Shock
- Bowditch's Navigator
- Bradley's Aberration
- Brahmagupta
- Brine Pool
- Brittle Star
- Brownian Motion
- Bubble Chamber
- Bubble in the Ice
- Budget Overrun
- Buoy Tender Thimble
- Butterfly Effect
- By-the-Wind Sailor
C: 62 names
- Cable Layer
- Calibration Run
- Caloris Rim
- Candle Against the Dark
- Candor
- Cannon's Sequence
- Canopus Reckoning
- Careful Measure
- Careful What You Assume
- Carina Survey
- Carl Linnaeus
- Caroline Herschel
- Caroline's Comets
- Carson's Sea
- Cartographer's Pencil
- Carver's Notebook
- Cassini's Gap
- Cataloger
- Cecilia Payne
- Centrifuge
- Challenger Deep Return
- Chapter Yet Unwritten
- Charles Wyville Thomson
- Chartmaker
- Châtelet's Fire
- Chikyu
- Chronometer
- Citation Needed
- Clear Sight
- Clio
- Closer Every Decade
C, continued
- Cloud Chamber
- Cloud Counter
- Coalsack Lantern
- Coelacanth
- Coffee Is a Reagent
- Cold Seep
- Collector of Sunrises
- Collegial Spirit
- Comb Jelly
- Comet Sweeper
- Committee Decision
- Common Understanding
- Conamara Chaos
- Considered Opinion
- Control Group
- Cook's Transit
- Copernicus' Turn
- Coracle
- Coral Sea Transect
- Cormorant
- Coronagraph
- Correlation Not Causation
- Corrigendum
- Cosmic Background
- Counter of Moons
- Courage to Be Wrong
- Crab Pulsar Listener
- Cryovolcano
- Curiosity
- Curlew
- Cutter Marginalia
D: 31 names
- Daedalus Workshop
- Dandelion Clock
- Dark Frame
- Darwin's Finches
- Data Not Shown
- Day Trip
- Dead Reckoning
- Debris Disk
- Decay Chain
- Deep Field Observer
- Defense Postponed
- Deneb by Morning
- Depot Run
- Diamond Dust
- Did You Calibrate It
- Diffraction Grating
- Diligence
- Dirac's Sea
- Diver's Slate
- Docendo Discimus
- Dogger Bank
- Dorothea Klumpke
- Double Blind
- Drake Passage
- Drift Bottle
- Drone Keeper
- Dropsonde
- Dry Valleys
- Dubito Ergo Cogito
- Due Diligence
- Dumbo Octopus
E: 37 names
- Eagle Pillars
- Earnest Seeker
- Earthshine
- Eavesdropper on Creation
- Eclipse Chaser
- Ecliptic
- Eddington's Eclipse
- Edge of the Known
- Edward Forbes
- Einstein Ring
- Ekman's Spiral
- Émilie du Châtelet
- Emission Nebula
- Emmy Noether
- Emperor Penguin
- Emperor Seamounts
- Enceladus Plume
- Encke Gap
- Enki
- Eppur Si Muove
- Epsilon Eridani Pilgrim
- Equanimity
- Equinox Passage
- Eratosthenes' Shadow
- Erebus Plume
- Errand Boat
- Error Bar
- Et Al.
- Euclid's Fifth
- Euler's Bridge
- Eunice Foote
- Eureka Moment
- Europa Lineae
- Every Rock a Record
- Evidence of Things Unseen
- Experientia Docet
- Eyes on Betelgeuse
F: 47 names
- Fair Witness
- Faraday's Candle
- Farthest North
- Fathom Line
- Feather Star
- Fermat's Margin
- Fermi's Question
- Ferry to the Array
- Festina Lente
- Feynman's Diagram
- Fibonacci Spiral
- Field Naturalist
- Field Notebook
- Finderscope
- Firefly Jar
- First Approximation
- First Light
- First, Observe
- FitzRoy's Barometer
- Flamsteed's Atlas
- Flat Field
- Fleming's Horsehead
- Flinders' Circuit
- Florence Bascom
- Focal Plane
- Footnote to the Stars
- For the Common Record
- Forster's Tern
- Fossil Hunter
- Foucault's Pendulum
- Fourier's Series
- Fram
- Fram Strait
- Franklin's Photograph
- Fraunhofer's Lines
- Free Inquiry
- Fresh Eyes
- Frictionless Surface
- Fridtjof Nansen
- Friend to Strange Shores
- Frigatebird
- Frost Line
- Fulmar
- Funding Cycle
- Further Study Needed
- Further Than Yesterday
- Furthest South
G: 33 names
- Galactic Anticenter
- Galapagos Rift
- Galathea
- Galileo's Moons
- Gannet
- Gatherer of Small Facts
- Gauss's Compass
- Gegenschein
- Generous Reading
- Gentle Skeptic
- Geologist's Hammer
- George Washington Carver
- Georges Lemaître
- Gig Footnote
- Glacial Erratic
- Gleaner
- Glomar Challenger
- Glowworm
- Gnomon
- Go Fetch
- Goddard's Cherry Tree
- Golden Ratio
- Good Question
- Grand Banks
- Grant Deadline
- Gravimeter
- Gravitational Lens
- Great Attractor
- Great Circle
- Grounding Line
- Guest of the Unknown
- Gulf Stream Rider
- Guo Shoujing
H: 40 names
- Hadal Pilgrim
- Hadal Zone
- Half-Life
- Halley's Return
- Halocline
- Harmonic Series
- Heliometer
- Heliopause Crossing
- Hellas Basin
- Henrietta Leavitt
- Herbarium Keeper
- Here Be Data
- Herschel's Sweep
- Hertzsprung's Giants
- Hevelius' Rooftop
- Hideki Yukawa
- Hill Sphere
- Hipparchus' Catalog
- HMS Beagle
- HMS Challenger
- HMS Erebus
- HMS Rattlesnake
- HMS Terror
- Home With Answers
- Home With Better Questions
- Honest Doubt
- Hooke's Micrographia
- Hooker's Herbarium
- Horsehead Passage
- Horseshoe Crab
- Hubble's Constant
- Huginn
- Humboldt Upwelling
- Humboldt's Current
- Humility
- Humpback Song
- Hutton's Unconformity
- Huygens' Pendulum
- Hyades Drifter
- Hypatia's Lantern
I: 53 names
- Ibn al-Haytham
- Ice Blink
- Ice Core
- Ice Shelf Edge
- Ideal Conditions
- In Prep
- In Situ
- In the Service of Wonder
- Ino Tadataka
- Ino's Coastline
- Inquiring Mind
- Instrument Maker
- Intellectual Honesty
- Interferometer
- Ishtar Terra
- Isochron
- ISV Blue Shift
- ISV Brown Dwarf Census
- ISV Cartographer's Dream
- ISV Clear Aperture
- ISV Dark Adapted
- ISV Deep Exposure
- ISV Dust to Data
- ISV Eratosthenes
- ISV Faint Companion
- ISV Farther Shore
- ISV Good Seeing
- ISV Guide Star
- ISV Habitable Zone
- ISV Half a Parsec
- ISV Hundred Year Watch
- ISV Leavitt's Law
- ISV Light Curve
- ISV Long Baseline
- ISV Morning Star Survey
- ISV Night Shift
- ISV Noether's Theorem
- ISV Patient Light
- ISV Perihelion Song
- ISV Quiet Sky
- ISV Second Sunrise
- ISV Slow Shutter
- ISV Snow Line
- ISV Starlight Ledger
- ISV Stratigrapher
- ISV Thin Atmosphere
- ISV Tidal Lock
- ISV Uncharted Margin
- ISV Unhurried Arrival
- ISV Volatile Inventory
- ISV Wide Field
- It Worked in the Simulator
- Ithaca Bound
J: 8 names
- Jagadish Chandra Bose
- James Hutton
- Jansky's Hiss
- Jeanne Baret
- Jeremiah Horrocks
- JOIDES Resolution
- Jolly Boat Jot
- Just One More Reading
K: 20 names
- Katabatic
- Keeler Gap
- Keen Eye
- Keeper of the Log
- Kelvin's Wake
- Kepler's Wake
- Kerguelen Plateau
- Khayyam's Calendar
- Kingfisher
- Kirkwood Gap
- Kite String
- Kittiwake
- Knowledge Freely Given
- Known Unknown
- Kovalevskaya's Top
- Kraken Mare
- Kuiper Cliff
- Kuiper's Belt
- Kupe's Wake
- Kuroshio Meander
L: 49 names
- Lab Coat Optional
- Lagoon Crossing
- Lagrange's Rest
- Lake Vostok Dreaming
- Lamp at the Threshold
- Lamp Trimmer
- Lander Wrangler
- Lantern in the Deep
- Lanternfish
- Laplace's Demon
- Late Heavy Bombardment
- Launch Appendix
- Laura Bassi
- Lavoisier's Balance
- Lead Line
- Least Squares
- Leatherback
- Leave Only Footprints
- Leavitt's Candle
- Leeuwenhoek's Drop
- Left as an Exercise
- Lehmann's Core
- Lemaître's Dawn
- Lens Grinder
- Let Us Find Out
- Letter to the Future
- Librarian
- Libration
- Lifelong Student
- Light Cone
- Light Minute
- Light of Vega
- Lighthouse Keeper
- Lightning Talk
- Linnaeus' Garden
- Lise Meitner
- Listening Post
- Little Sounding
- Local Bubble
- Loihi Rising
- Look Before You Theorize
- Look, Don't Touch
- Lost City Vent Field
- Love of Learning
- Lovelace's Engine
- Lowest Bidder
- Lux et Veritas
- Lyell's Principles
- Lyman Alpha Forest
M: 58 names
- Magellanic Stream
- Magnetometer
- Magnetotail
- Major Revisions
- Man o' War
- Manta
- Mare Incognitum
- Mare Tranquillitatis
- Margaret Huggins
- Maria Cunitz
- Maria Kirch
- Maria Mitchell
- Mariana Sounding
- Marianne North
- Marine Iguana
- Marine Snow
- Mary Anning
- Mary Somerville
- Maskelyne's Almanac
- Maxwell Montes
- Maxwell's Demon
- Mayfly
- McClintock's Maize
- Mean Free Path
- Measure What Is Measurable
- Measured Step
- Meghnad Saha
- Meitner's Walk
- Mendel's Peas
- Mendeleev's Gap
- Mens et Manus
- Merian's Butterflies
- Meridian Line
- Message in a Bottle
- Messier's List
- Meteor Counter
- Metis
- Metric This Time
- Micrometer
- Mid-Atlantic Ridge
- Midnight Sun
- Midnight Zone
- Midwinter Station
- Milkweed
- Mimir's Well
- Minerva's Owl
- Minnow
- Minor Revisions
- Mira Variable
- Mitchell's Comet
- Mixed Layer
- Mnemosyne
- Monterey Canyon
- Moon Jelly
- Mooring Line
- More of a Comment Really
- Mother Hen
- Muninn
N: 25 names
- Nabu's Stylus
- Named by Committee
- Nansen's Drift
- Narwhal
- Nasir al-Din al-Tusi
- Nathaniel Bowditch
- Natura Non Facit Saltus
- Naturalist's Net
- Nautilus Shell
- Neap Tide
- Nereus
- Nettie Stevens
- Newton's Prism
- Next Page of the Notebook
- Nicole-Reine Lepaute
- Night Assistant
- Noether's Symmetry
- Noise Floor
- Normal Distribution
- Not to Scale
- Nothing Taken on Faith
- Null Hypothesis
- Nullius in Verba
- Nunatak
- Nutation
O: 25 names
- Oarfish
- Objective Lens
- Occator Bright Spot
- Occultation Timing
- Octant
- Odyssey of Small Things
- Off by One
- Olbers' Paradox
- Ole Rømer
- Olympus Shadow
- Omar Khayyam
- On Behalf of the Curious
- One More Orbit
- One Step Further
- Oort Shore
- Oort's Cloud
- Open Lead
- Open Mind
- Open Problem
- Order of Magnitude
- Orion Nursery
- Orrery
- Osprey
- Outlier
- Oystercatcher
P: 60 names
- Pack Ice
- Pale Blue Reminder
- Pancake Ice
- Paper Boat
- Parallax
- Pascal's Wager
- Paschen Series
- Past the Last Beacon
- Pasteur's Flask
- Patience
- Patient Observer
- Patiently Outbound
- Payne's Hydrogen
- Peer Review
- Pending Replication
- Per Aspera
- Per My Last Transmission
- Periapsis
- Permafrost Ledger
- Perseverance
- Phalarope
- Phase Transition
- Photic Zone
- Photographic Plate
- Photon Sphere
- Piazzi's Ceres
- Pilot Chart
- Pinnace Postscript
- Plain Evidence
- Planet Hunter
- Planetesimal
- Plasma Sheet
- Plate Measurer
- Pleiades Count
- Plumb Line
- Plus Ultra
- Pocket Watch
- Polar Night
- Pole of Inaccessibility
- Polynya
- Pond Skater
- Poster Session
- Pourquoi-Pas?
- Precession
- Precision
- Preliminary Results
- Prepared Mind
- Priestley's Mint Sprig
- Principal Investigator
- Prism and Slit
- Probe Tender Marigold
- Promethean Spark
- Proper Motion
- Proteus
- Protoplanetary Disk
- Proxima Bound
- Psyche's Lamp
- Ptolemy's Error
- Publish or Perish
- Puffin
Q: 2 names
- Quiet Wonder
- Quod Erat Demonstrandum
R: 108 names
- Rachel Carson
- Radial Velocity
- Radiosonde Mother
- Raman's Scatter
- Ramanujan's Notebook
- Random Walk
- Reader of Old Light
- Reasonable Doubt
- Redshift
- Reflection Nebula
- Regulus Occulted
- Relay Runner
- Rerum Cognoscere Causas
- Research Assistant
- Resonance
- Restless Mind
- Results May Vary
- Retriever
- Reviewer Two
- Riemann's Surface
- Rigel Baseline
- Right Whale
- Rigor
- Ring Current
- Ring Nebula Visitor
- Road to Fomalhaut
- Roche Limit
- Rock Hound
- Rømer's Delay
- Röntgen's Plate
- Room Temperature
- Rosalind Franklin
- Ross Sea Pilgrim
- Rounding Error
- Rover Nanny
- RRS Bird Island
- RRS Celtic Deep
- RRS Deep Convection
- RRS Discovery
- RRS Edmond Halley
- RRS Ernest Shackleton
- RRS Fair Isle
- RRS Halley Bay
- RRS Ice Edge
- RRS James Clark Ross
- RRS James Cook
- RRS Kittiwake Sound
- RRS Longitude
- RRS Northern Fulmar
- RRS Patient Witness
- RRS Polar Front
- RRS Rothera Light
- RRS Shearwater
- RRS Signy
R, continued
- RRS South Georgia
- RRS Southern Mooring
- RRS Sub-Antarctic
- RRS William Scoresby
- RRS William Smith
- RRS Winter Solstice
- Rutherford's Foil
- RV Albedo
- RV Araon
- RV Atlantis
- RV Benthic Hour
- RV Calypso
- RV Catch and Release
- RV Cold Trap
- RV Comet Hunter
- RV Core Sample
- RV Dust Lane
- RV Faint Object
- RV Far Sounding
- RV Field Season
- RV Gentle Hypothesis
- RV Halley's Diving Bell
- RV Investigator
- RV Isobar
- RV Kelp Forest
- RV Kilo Moana
- RV Knorr
- RV Lodestone
- RV Margin of Error
- RV Maria S. Merian
- RV Meridian Passage
- RV Meteor
- RV Mirai
- RV Morning Cast
- RV Night Trawl
- RV Open Question
- RV Plankton Bloom
- RV Polarstern
- RV Quiet Water
- RV Ring Shepherd
- RV Sediment
- RV Slow Neutrino
- RV Sonne
- RV Soundings
- RV Spindrift
- RV Standing Wave
- RV Stellar Nursery
- RV Tangaroa
- RV Thousand Fathoms
- RV Tide Table
- RV Tidewrack
- RV Vema
- RV Wild Surmise
- RV Winter Quarters
S: 105 names
- Sabbatical
- Sample Runner
- Sample Size of One
- Sapere Aude
- Sargasso Drifter
- Sastrugi
- Schiaparelli's Map
- Schrödinger's Litter Box
- Schwarzschild's Radius
- Scientia
- Scientia Potentia Est
- Scoresby's Snowflake
- Scribe of the Voyage
- Sea Angel
- Sea Butterfly
- Sea of Crises
- Sea Otter
- Sea Pen
- Seamount Circuit
- Second Look
- Sedna
- See Attached
- Seed Scatter
- Seismograph
- Seki Takakazu
- Semper Curiosus
- Seshat
- Seven Sisters
- Sextant
- Shackleton Rim
- Shared Knowledge
- Shelf Break
- Shen Kuo's Needle
- Shepherd of Probes
- Ship's Naturalist
- Shore Party
- Short Hop
- Shoulders of Giants
- Show Your Work
- Sic Itur ad Astra
- Signal Hunter
- Signal to Noise
- Significant Figure
- Siphonophore
- Sirius Companion
- Skiff Addendum
- Skipping Stone
- Sky Surveyor
- Slack Tide Survey
- Slide Rule
- Slow and Certain
- Slow Road to Certainty
S, continued
- Small Step Outward
- Snow Petrel
- Snowblind Cartographer
- Sober Judgment
- Sodium Doublet
- Sofia Kovalevskaya
- Solstice Reading
- Somerville's Connexion
- Sooty Shearwater
- Sophie Brahe
- Sophie Germain
- Sound Method
- Sounding Party
- Sounding Wire
- Southern Lights
- Sower
- Specimen Collector
- Specimen Jar
- Spectrograph
- Spectrum
- Spring Tide
- Sputnik Planitia
- Srinivasa Ramanujan
- SRV Accretion Disk
- SRV Chromosphere
- SRV Core Collapse
- SRV Corona Borealis
- SRV Flare Watch
- SRV Graduate Student
- SRV Lantern Bearer
- SRV Limb Darkening
- SRV Main Sequence
- SRV Null Result
- SRV Solar Minimum
- SRV Spectral Class G
- SRV Sunspot Cycle
- Standard Candle
- Stargazer's Apprentice
- Statistically Significant
- Steady Hand
- Steller's Journal
- Stepping Stone
- Still Counting Stars
- Storm Petrel
- Strange Attractor
- Struve's Arc
- Subglacial Lake
- Sum of Our Notes
- Sundog
- Surface of Last Scattering
- Surveyor's Chain
- Swarm Herder
- Syzygy
T: 47 names
- Tabula Rasa
- Tadpole
- Take Only Measurements
- Tau Ceti Census
- Taxonomist
- Ten Thousand Winters
- Tenacity
- Tender Mercies
- Termination Shock
- Terra Incognita
- Tethys
- Thales' Eclipse
- Tharsis Rise
- That's Odd
- The Cartographer
- The Map Is Not Finished
- The Sky Is a Library
- Then Ask Why
- Theodolite
- Thermocline
- Thesis Draft Nine
- Third Pot of Coffee
- Thistledown
- Thoth
- Thought and Memory
- Tide Reader
- Tiger Stripes
- Titan Shoreline
- Tonga Trench
- Torricelli's Trumpet
- Torsion Balance
- Transit Circle
- Transit Timer
- Translator of Starlight
- Trapezium
- Trench Walker
- Triangulation
- Triple Point
- Trivially Obvious
- Trojan Camp
- Tropicbird
- Trust the Instrument
- Tsiolkovsky's Cradle
- Tuning Fork
- Turing's Tape
- Twenty-One Centimeter Line
- Tycho's Quadrant
U: 12 names
- Ulugh Beg's Arc
- Undaunted Inquiry
- Under Review
- Under the Ice
- Unexpected Result
- Unfinished Atlas
- Unhurried
- Urania
- Urbain Le Verrier
- USCSS Prometheus
- USS Equinox
- USS Grissom
V: 11 names
- Valles Traverse
- Vampire Squid
- Variable Star Observer
- Veil Remnant
- Vent Chimney
- Vernier
- Verona Rupes
- Very Long Baseline
- Visiting Scholar
- Vityaz
- Volta's Pile
W: 30 names
- Wallace's Line
- Wandering Albatross
- Wang Zhenyi
- Wang Zhenyi's Lamp
- Water Sky
- Water Strider
- We Came to Listen
- We Must Know
- We Will Know
- Weather Eye
- Weddell Gyre
- Weddell Seal
- Wegener's Drift
- Whale Fall
- Whale Shark
- Whaleboat Asterisk
- What the Light Remembers
- Where the Charts End
- Whistler Mode
- White Smoker
- Whiteout Navigator
- Wien's Peak
- Williamina Fleming
- Willing Apprentice
- Within Error Bars
- Witness to Transit
- Wolf 359 Courier
- Wonder
- Works in Theory
- World Line
X: 12 names
- XRV Alien Meadow
- XRV Biosignature
- XRV Catalog of Moons
- XRV Field Trip
- XRV First Footprint
- XRV Gentle Landing
- XRV Ground Truth
- XRV Regolith
- XRV Sample Return
- XRV Strange Chemistry
- XRV Tidepool
- XRV Type Specimen
Y: 1 name
- Yeti Crab