20 Things You Didn’t Know About Dune

6. The Real-life Moon Of Titan Has Its Landscape Named After Places In Dune

dune paul crysknife fight battle
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger / Public domain

If Dune has friends in high places it has them in government-funded scientific ones too. NASA itself used planetary names from Frank Herbert’s book to inspire Titan’s real-life nomenclature.

There’s Arrakis Planitia, named for Dune itself, as well as Caladan Planitia and Salusa Labyrinthus, so named for the Atreides homeworld and the Sardukar training planet respectively.

This approach to naming came about when the exploratory spacecraft Cassini did a fly-by back in 2005; owing to a large number of dunes now visible on the planet's surface, the beautiful nerds at NASA decided to honour Herbert’s masterpiece in the galaxy for real. Very touching, when you think about it.

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Total goblin. Quit the food and beverage industry after ten years to try my hand at writing nonsense online. I have a huge passion for film, television, cats, art, tattoos, food, anarchy and classic literature (mainly Dune). Currently based at my mum's house, I can be best reached on Instagram (@charlie_marx) where I attempt to soothe my mental health with memes.