Steve writes:

> > Just as a very small point, the names of the shuttles are Columbia,
>  > Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. All of these
>  > names were taken
>  > from ships of discovery and scientific exploration.
>
>  Maybe we'll eventually have one named "Argo"?

While there have been no Argo's, there have been two spacecraft named
"Odyssey", whose name was originally derived not from Jason's exploits but
Odysseus's. The first Odyssey was the command service module of Apollo 13
(see: http://aics-research.com/apollo13.html ) . The second Odyssey, the Mars
Odyssey, is alive and en route to Mars as we speak (see:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey ). You'll hear a great deal about this
newest Odyssey in just a couple of months.

Both of these spacecraft weren't named after Odysseus directly however.
Rather their names were chosen because of the movie, "2001: A Space Odyssey",
with an obvious special interest this year. Mars Odyssey was launched the
spring of 2001 with Arthur C. Clarke's blessing and will arrive at Mars this
fall.

The most famous ship of discovery is, of course, the Beagle, the ship that
was captained by Robert FitzRoy and carried a very young Charles Darwin as an
unpaid naturalist  in 1831 (see:
http://www.biology.com/visitors/ae/voyage/beagle.html ). The United States
has yet to name a spacecraft after the Beagle, but the Beagle 2 lander being
currently built by the British and the European Space Agency will be the core
project of the ESA Mars Express, currently scheduled to land on Mars in 2003
(see: http://beagle2.open.ac.uk/ ). As you might guess, the intention of the
Beagle 2 is to look for the independent evolution of life in this solar
system.

While there have been no spacecraft of any sort that I know of that have been
named Argo, there is a giant constellation in the southern hemisphere (that
you really can't see from the northern half of the world) named "Argo Navis".
Indeed, the constellation is so large that it's commonly broken into three
still very large subconstellations, "Pupis" (the poop deck), "Carina" (the
keel), and "Vela", the sails. Also attendant to these three constellations
are Pyxis, the compass, Volans, the flying fish, and Columba, the dove.

Nonetheless, Argo is, as Steve suggests, another name in waiting, ready to be
used.

Wirt Atmar

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