NO LONGER SURLY BOUND

7 Asteroids With Astronauts' Names (CBS News, August 7, 2003)

Seven asteroids circling the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter are being named for the astronauts who died in the space shuttle Columbia accident.

Astronauts Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown and Laurel Clark of NASA and Ilan Ramon of Israel died on Feb. 1 when Columbia broke up while returning to Earth from a 16-day orbital mission.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, proposed naming the asteroids for the astronauts. The plan was approved by the International Astronomical Union and announced on Wednesday by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Minor Planet Center, the official clearinghouse for asteroid data.

The named asteroids were discovered by former JPL astronomer Eleanor F. Helin in 2001 using the Palomar Observatory near San Diego. The objects range in size from 3.1 miles to 4.3 miles in diameter.

"Asteroids have been around for billions of years and will remain for billions more," Raymond Bambery, head of the JPL Near-Earth Asteroid Tracing Project, said in a statement. "I like to think that in the years, decades and millennia ahead people will look to the heavens, locate these seven celestial sentinels and remember the sacrifice made by the Columbia astronauts."

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 8, 2003 10:57 PM