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 Nelson
Mandela International Day Website
 New
York USA (18 July 2012 LT) — Luna Society
International (LSI) has announced that a crater on Luna, Earth’s
Moon, has been renamed to honor humanitarian and statesman
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela on the occasion of his 94th birthday.
The crater, which is located in the Moon’s Lacus Somniorum
(“Lake of Dreams”) district, has been given the honorary
designation as the Nelson Mandela International Peace Crater
as part of the Nelson Mandela International Day 2012 celebration.
Mandela Day was officially declared in 2009 by the United
Nations in recognition of the former South African President’s
contribution to the culture of peace and freedom.
Nelson
Mandela, known popularly as "Madiba," was born in Transkei,
South Africa, on 18 July 1918. His father was Chief Henry Mandela of
the Tembu Tribe. Mandela himself was educated at University College
of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand and qualified in
law in 1942. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was
engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party's apartheid
policies after 1948. He went on trial for treason in 1956-1961 and
was acquitted in 1961.
After
the banning of the ANC in 1960, Nelson Mandela argued for the
setting up of a military wing within the ANC. In June 1961, the ANC
executive considered his proposal on the use of violent tactics and
agreed that those members who wished to involve themselves in
Mandela's campaign would not be stopped from doing so by the ANC.
This led to the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mandela was arrested
in 1962 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment with hard labour.
In
1963, when many fellow leaders of the ANC and the Umkhonto we Sizwe
were arrested, Mandela was brought to stand trial with them for
plotting to overthrow the government by violence. His statement from
the dock received considerable international publicity. On 12 June
1964, eight of the accused, including Mandela, were sentenced to
life imprisonment. From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated at Robben
Island Prison, off Cape Town; thereafter, he was at Pollsmoor
Prison, nearby on the mainland.
During
his years in prison, Nelson Mandela's reputation grew steadily. He
was widely accepted as the most significant black leader in South
Africa and became a potent symbol of resistance as the
anti-apartheid movement gathered strength. He consistently refused
to compromise his political position to obtain his freedom.
Nelson
Mandela was released on 11 February 1990. After his release, he
plunged himself wholeheartedly into his life's work, striving to
attain the goals he and others had set out almost four decades
earlier. In 1991, at the first national conference of the ANC held
inside South Africa since the organization had been banned in 1960,
Mandela was elected President of the ANC, while his lifelong friend
and colleague, Oliver Tambo, became the organisation's National
Chairperson.
In
1993, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Nelson Mandela
and Frederik Willem de Klerk "for their work for the peaceful
termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations
for a new democratic South Africa."
The crater designated to honor Nelson Mandela was previously known
as Plana G, and is located at 39.1º North (latitude) and 22.9º
East (longitude) on the so-called Earthside ("near
side") of the Moon. It
measures approximately nine kilometers in diameter, with a depth
of about 910 meters.
The Nelson Mandela Peace Crater is part of the Plana crater
group, named for Baron Giovanni Antonio Amedeo Plana (6 November
1781 – 20 January 1864), an Italian-born astronomer and mathematician,
considered among the leading scientists of his era. Plana's
contributions included work on the motions of the Moon, as well
as integrals, elliptic functions, heat, electrostatics, and
geodesy.
Mandela (Plana G) is the second-largest of five satellite craters to
Plana, and
rests in the northern section of the Moon’s magnificent Lake of Dreams.
The
official designation of a Lunar crater is a singular honor
bestowed upon only a select few luminaries. Among those
receiving this rare tribute over the past century are Leonardo
da Vinci, Christopher Columbus, Sir Isaac Newton
and Jules Verne.
Luna Society International is the world’s largest and most
prominent group advocating privatized exploration, settlement
and development of Earth’s Moon. The centerpiece of the
Society’s effort is a ten-year, $3.8-billion (USD) program to
return humans to the Moon and establish permanent bases there.
The Society has also developed the most successful
commercially-available lunar photomap software ever released to
the public, the Full Moon Atlas (http://www.fullmoonatlas.com),
which is used by astronomers and in classrooms around the world.
 The Society successfully advocated the removal of a crater named
for an accused Nazi war criminal, Dr. Hans Eppinger, Jr., by the
International Astronomical Union, and was the prime mover behind
the draft proposal to designate a group of Lunar craters as a
memorial to the seven crew members who perished in the 2003
Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-107) tragedy. (See http://lunasociety.org/news/columbia_region.shtml)
Luna Society International is a registered International
Business Company (IBC #519589) currently authorized to operate
in more than 200 nations around the world, including the United
States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France,
China, Japan and India, as well as all other nations in Europe,
Asia and the Americas.
The Society’s main operations hubs are in Hong Kong and on the
Isle of Man (U.K.). It maintains a satellite office in Manhattan
for business operations in the Americas.
# # #
NELSON MANDELA PEACE CRATER INFORMATION:
Eponym: Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (Plana G)
Location: Northern Lacus Somniorum (39.1° N 22.9° E)
Approximate Crater Diameter: ~8.9 kilometers
Crater Depth: ~990 meters
View Crater Region Photomap
(Detail)
View Crater Region Photomap
(High Resolution)
The URL for this document is http://www.LunaSociety.org/mandela/
Biographical information from Les Prix Nobel: The Nobel Prizes (Tore
Frängsmyr, Editor, Nobel Foundation), Stockholm, 1994
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