NASA Names Asteroids After Diverse Group of 27 Trailblazing Astronauts

Asteroids have been named after a group of astronauts who have been trailblazers for their ethnic groups.

(Photo: NASA via Getty Images)
IN SPACE - DECEMBER 21: In this handout photo provided by NASA, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is seen floating during a spacewalk on December 21, 2015, in space.

The Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) recently published a list of official asteroid names honoring 27 African American, Hispanic, and Native American space travelers. Active and former NASA astronauts, US Air Force astronaut candidates, and one Soviet-era cosmonaut are among the namesakes.

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Marc Buie, a Boulder, Colorado-based astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, found all 27 astronaut-named asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Buie is also a co-investigator on NASA's Lucy mission, which will research Trojan asteroids that surround the Sun, leading and trailing Jupiter in its orbit, after it launches in October.

"It's an honor and a privilege to name these asteroids in recognition of fellow space explorers while also adding to the message of the power and value of diversity for all human endeavors," said Buie in a statement released by NASA.

A team of scientists and students affiliated with the Lucy project suggested the concept of naming asteroids after astronauts to the IAU. Cathy Olkin, the Lucy mission's deputy principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute, led the initiative, with help from Keith Noll, a planetary astronomer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, who also serves as Lucy project scientist.

"Last summer a group of us got together to honor a diverse group of astronauts who have traveled to space and the pioneers who paved the way for these explorers," said Olkin. "But there are many more, and we hope to add their names to the sky in the future."

José Hernández can look up when his asteroid (122554) Joséhernández is in space, according to CNN. Hernández grew up in a migrant farming family and worked in the fields as a child.

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Hernández realized he wanted to be an astronaut by the time he was in high school, motivated by the work of Franklin Chang-Daz, the namesake of another of these asteroids, (115015) Chang Daz. After that, Hernández earned two degrees in electrical engineering, which he used to build the world's first full-field optical mammography imaging system.

The story behind the asteroid (103739) Higginbotham is another. Joan Higginbotham worked as an electrical engineer at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where she was involved in 53 shuttle missions. She also flew to the International Space Station (ISS) on the shuttle Discovery, where she worked as a mission expert on an assembly mission.

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The IAU team in charge of naming these asteroids says it plans to begin bringing more diverse names to the sky in the future. All 27 asteroids are in one belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The 27 astronauts (plus a cosmonaut) follow almost 40 other space explorers whose names have been applied to asteroids previously. Members of the Apollo 11 moon landing team, the crews of the space shuttle Challenger (STS-51L) and Columbia (STS-107), and Yuri Gagarin, the first human to fly into space nearly 60 years ago, are among the namesakes.

Joe Acabá and Stephanie Wilson, part of NASA's Artemis team who are among the first U.S. astronauts training for a return to the moon, and Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, a retired cosmonaut who was the first Cuban and the first citizen of African descent to travel into space, are among the current honorees.

Michael Lopez-Alegria, the first former NASA astronaut to return to the International Space Station as the commander of Axiom Space's first commercial spaceflight in 2022, is also among the current namesakes.

The tales and positions of all 27 asteroids can be found here.