Asteroids Named for Columbia Astronauts
FYI,
"Asteroids Named for Columbia Astronauts"
Associated Press
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=1&u=/ap/20030806/ap_on_sc/columbia_asteroids
: Seven asteroids circling the sun between the orbits of Mars and
: Jupiter are being named for the astronauts who died in the space
: shuttle Columbia accident, officials announced Wednesday.
: Astronauts Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Kalpana
: Chawla, David Brown and Laurel Clark of NASA and Ilan Ramon of
: Israel died on Feb. 1 when Columbia broke up while returning to
: Earth from a 16-day orbital mission.
: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. proposed naming
: the asteroids for the astronauts. The plan was approved by the
: International Astronomical Union and announced on Wednesday by the
: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Minor Planet Center, the
: officials clearinghouse for asteroid data.
: The named asteroids were discovered by former JPL astronomer Eleanor
: F. Helin in 2001 using the Palomar Observatory near San Diego. The
: objects range in size from 3.1 to 4.3 miles in diameter.
Talk about elaborate head stones. :)
: "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."
I would much rather people honor the shuttle Columbia's crew by going
to those seven asteroids and making use of them.
How about one upping Mt. Rushmore and strip mine those asteroids into
the likeness of those seven astronauts? Besides the economic value of
the mined precious metals, this would make seven tourist destinations
to spur interplanetary space tourism. :)
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Mark Reiff e-mail: markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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