The late musician David Bowie had a huge impact on popular culture by adopting the persona of a Martian in his classic space rock opera of 1972, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and with his earlier song, Life on Mars?.

More than any other figure in popular culture, Bowie made the idea of references to other worlds seem a normal, unremarkable component of our culture. Specifically, in his music, there are many allusions and explicit references to Mars.  In so doing, David Bowie's service to the cause of planetary sciences, by normalizing outer space and Mars as everyday elements of popular culture, is very great indeed.

We ask the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to name a major landscape feature on Mars in honor of David Bowie. We ask the Planetary Society to assist us in this effort.