* Astronomy

Asteroid Named in Honour of 50th Anniversary of the Space Age
Cambridge, MA - In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the start of the Space Age, an asteroid has been named "Astronautica." Minor planet number 100,000 (also known as 1982 SH1) was chosen for this honour because space is defined to begin at an altitude of 100,000 meters (100 kilometres, or 62 miles) above the earth's surface.

"Fifty years ago, a tiny satellite named Sputnik became the world's first artificial satellite. It seemed only fitting to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the dawn of the Space Age in some astronomical way" - Brian Marsden, director emeritus of the Minor Planet Centre, which is located at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass.

The Minor Planet Centre serves as a clearinghouse for asteroid discoveries and assigns numbers in the order that observations are received and catalogued. Astronautica received the number 100,000 in October 2005. It was discovered by astronomer Jim Gibson of Palomar Observatory on September 28, 1982, only days before the 25th anniversary of Sputnik.



"Astronautica is not a particularly unusual object. It just happened to be the 100,000th entry into our database" - Brian Marsden.

The name was approved by the International Astronomical Union's Committee on Small Body Nomenclature, of which Marsden is a member. Currently, 14,077 asteroids have names while a total of 164,612 asteroids have been identified and numbered.

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