Japan Seeks Help to Name Silicon-Based Asteroid Giant for Hayabusa2 Mission; JAXA Wants ‘Non-offensive’ Suggestions

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Mj-bird)
Japan Seeks Help to Name Silicon-Based Asteroid Giant For Hayabusa2 Mission; JAXA Wants 'Non-Offensive' Suggestions

Japan wants to rename the asteroid subject to its Hayabusa2 space probe. JAXA, Japan's space agency, is allowing all space enthusiasts to contribute until May 9.

Japan Wants To Rename Asteroid 2001 C221

Japan seeks to rename the silicon-based asteroid giant, 2001 CC21, which it will study in 2026. The massive space rock is about the size of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Although JAXA is open to the public's suggestions, it has some requirements. First, the name should be "non-offensive" and 16 characters long or less. Finally, it should be better than the current name—2001 CC21.

The campaign concludes on May 9 and coincides with JAXA's intention to launch its Hayabusa2 space probe in July 2026 and fly it past this rocky, 1,300-1,800-foot-long near-Earth asteroid.

The chosen name will join the ranks of asteroids orbiting our solar system, such as asteroid 162173 Ryugu, named after a mystical underwater "Dragon Palace" from Japanese tradition; 101955 Bennu, named after an Egyptian bird; and many more.

Asteroid 2001 CC21 completes one round of the sun every 383.1 days, or 1.05 years, which is somewhat longer than the orbit of Earth. Even though the space rock is classified as a "near-Earth object" by NASA's science definition team due to its distance, it never approaches Earth's orbit by more than 0.08 astronomical units or 7,436,465 miles.

For an asteroid like 2001 CC21, which is larger than 97% of known asteroids but less than the greatest known giants in our solar system, such as the record-holding "dwarf planet" 1 Ceres, those millions of kilometers are a healthy, safe distance.

The space rock was first discovered on Feb. 3, 2001, by the US Air Force's Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program. Since then, it has remained unnamed for over two decades.

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What Is Hayabusa2?

Hayabusa2 is a Japanese spacecraft that researched Ryugu, gathered samples, and transported them back to Earth for examination. The spacecraft is now traveling to asteroid 1998 KY26 for a longer period of time.

It investigated Ryugu (162173), an asteroid, from June 2018 until November 2019. It sent out several landers and a penetrator and took several samples from the asteroid.

The Hayabusa2 mission is an extension of Japan's original Hayabusa mission, which was the first to successfully land and take off from an asteroid and the first spacecraft to collect samples from an asteroid. On June 13, 2010, it brought samples from the asteroid 25143 Itokawa back to Earth.

In December 2014, JAXA launched Hayabusa2 to begin sample collection in Ryugu. In June 2018, Hayabusa2 touched down on the asteroid and sent out two rovers and a tiny lander. Then, on February 22, 2019, Hayabusa2 fired an impactor into the asteroid to construct an artificial crater. As a result, the spacecraft was able to extract a sample from below Ryugu's surface.

The NASA OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu and the Hayabusa2 mission are comparable. In October 2020, OSIRIS-REx successfully obtained a sample from Bennu, and in 2023, it will return to Earth.

Carbonaceous asteroids are assumed to be the stony building blocks of the early solar system, and both missions investigated them. Thanks to these asteroids, scientists may learn more about how the solar system started and how life eventually evolved.