All great project start somewhere and all great projects have a name. Some names are abbreviations of their true meaning and some are just for fun.
After our team had our first teleconference with the USIP leaders from NASA we had a short debate and voting session on what the name of our project would be, and CATE was born.
Throughout voting, we were torn between CATE (Collisional Accretion Experiment), SPACE (Student Panetesimal Accretion Experiment), and SLOTH (Slowly Launching Objects Through Haboobs).
SPACE started as a solid choice simply for professionalism. SLOTH was a runner-up due to the humor of the name. Finally, the winner, CATE Winslet won because there was a good balance between the fun of having a sloth mascot named Cate Winslet and a professional name: CATE.
So, what’s in our project’s name? A small bit of humor from the original option of SLOTH, the true meaning Collisional Accretion Project, and a deep love for the great actress K(C)ate Winslet.