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The Space Shuttle Columbia crew, who were tragically lost during re-entry in February 2003, were Commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool, Mission Specialists Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark and payload specialist Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut. The names of these adventurers have been designated to asteroids that can be relatively easily observed by Earth based telescopes, to act as celestial monuments to the astronauts' lives.
The names, proposed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, USA, were recently approved by the International Astronomical Union. The official clearing house of asteroid data, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Minor Planet Center, released the dedication today.
The seven asteroids were discovered at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego in July. The asteroids range from five to seven kilometres in diameter. "Asteroids have been around for billions of years and will remain for billions more," said Dr. Raymond Bambery, Principal Investigator of JPL's Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking Project. "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," he said.
The 28th and final flight of Columbia STS-107 was a 16-day mission dedicated to research in physical, life and space sciences. The seven astronauts aboard Columbia worked 24 hours a day, in two alternating shifts, successfully conducting approximately 80 separate experiments. On 1 February the Columbia and its crew were lost over the western United States during the spacecraft's re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
Asteroids are the rocky fragments left over from the formation of the Solar System about 4.6 billion years ago. Scientists believe that there are millions of asteroids, ranging in size from a few meters across to hundreds of kilometres in diameter. Currently 100,000 asteroids have been detected since the first asteroid, Ceres, was discovered on 1 January 1801. Ceres is the largest at about 933 kilometres in diameter.
More info: NASA
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