* Astronomy

APL Rocks! Asteroid Named After JHU Applied Physics Lab
The lab that landed the first spacecraft on an asteroid now has its name on one of the sun-orbiting space rocks.
Lauding the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory's leading role in several planetary missions, the International Astronomical Union approved the name "132524 APL" for the provisionally tagged 2002 JF56, a small main-belt asteroid just beyond Mars' orbit. The Pluto-bound, APL-built New Horizons spacecraft zipped past the asteroid last June, and with some fast planning and programming from operators at APL and other institutions, was able to photograph the 2-mile-wide asteroid while testing its abilities to track moving objects.

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