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Asteroids to be Named for Student Scientists
By SPACE.COM Staff
posted: 05:30 pm ET
23 October 2001
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asteroids_students_011023 Students competing in Washington, D.C. this week for the title, "America's Top Young Scientist of the Year," will also receive title to some extraterrestrial real estate. The Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program will name asteroids for each of the 40 middle school students who are finalists in this year's Discovery Young Scientist Challenge, as well as their teachers. Dr. David L. Briggs, director of Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dr. Grant Stokes, LINEAR's principle investigator, came up with the idea of naming minor planets for accomplished science students and their teachers in grades five through 12. Stokes himself is a former high school science fair winner in New Mexico, and he and Briggs hope the asteroid honor will encourage science education in the middle and secondary schools. In addition to the official certificates, students and teachers will receive information on how to find their asteroids in the sky. Stokes noted, however, that honorees will have to go to an observatory to see their namesakes, as they are too tiny to detect with the naked eye or a standard telescope. But size is relative. According to Dr. Stokes, "Each asteroid is several kilometers in diameter, which is a pretty big piece of real estate." MIT's Lincoln Laboratory has discovered thousands of near-Earth asteroids, or minor planets, since 1998 through the LINEAR program. LINEAR currently detects about 70 percent of the asteroids discovered every year. Lincoln Laboratory hopes to make the asteroid honor a regular event at the annual Discovery Young Scientist Challenge, and to expand the program to include competitors in the Intel Science Talent Search and the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
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