WASHINGTON -- In honor of the 30^th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing, three asteroids orbiting the sun have been named for the Apollo 11 astronauts, the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass. told space.com today.

Dr. Brian Marsden, head of the center which studies asteroids and small planetary bodies, said the three asteroids were found orbiting between Mars and Jupiter by the Klet Observatory in the Czech Republic.

"It was their (the observatory) idea, not ours," Marsden told space.com from his office at the center, which is part of the Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory complex.

The three asteroids, which average about 10 to 15 miles in size, were found in 1982 and 1983.

The International Astronomical Union approved the idea this spring in record time after the observatory scientists made the proposal. "This was unusually fast for this sort of thing," Marsden said. Naming objects found in the solar system could take months and possibly longer. The Czech astronomers wanted to name the asteroids before tomorrows anniversary of the first Apollo landing on the Moon.