hey kids..name this asteriod

[sky otter]

if you have a kid or grandkid..go for it


Kids to Name Asteroid
NASA's contest to name a space rock.
By Rich_Maloof 1 hour ago

"Every child is a scientist," the astrophysicist and educator Neil DeGrasse Tyson has repeatedly asserted, noting the way children experiment by pulling the petals from flowers and examining bugs even before learning to speak. Making the most of that innate curiosity in our world and the cosmos far beyond, NASA has just announced an asteroid-naming contest for students to seed interest in one of its most important missions: cultivating the scientific minds of tomorrow.

NASA's contest
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/name-asteroid.html
relates to the launch of its OSIRIS-REx mission scheduled for 2016, in which samples from the near-Earth asteroid
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/
currently named (101955) 1999 RQ36 called will be collected. Chunks of space rock from the asteroid may reveal clues about the origin of the solar system and of life on Earth.
Naming an asteroid isn't quite so simple as naming a puppy or a hamster, though on the plus side, there's less mess to clean up. Guidelines for the competition
http://www.planetary.org/get-involved/contests/osirisrex/guidelines.html
specify that proposed names should be no longer than 16 characters, non-offensive, and pronounceable — though previous names
http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/MPNames.html
for astral nuggets like Aakritijai, Tezcatlipoca and Vasifedoseev suggest there's some elbow room. How an asteroid name could roll off the tongue any easier than (101955) 1999 RQ36 is anyone's guess, but please, kids, be a little more imaginitive than your predecessors were when they named the satellites Adamspencer and Bobmiller.

Anyone under the age of 18, from anywhere in the world, is invited to enter the contest
http://www.planetary.org/get-involved/contests/osirisrex/enter.html
by proposing and justifying a name by the deadline of Dec. 2, 2012. If NASA's vision is fulfilled, the kid who wins the contest just might be among the scientists examining the asteroid samples when the OSIRIS-REx explorer (pictured)




returns to terra firma in 2023. That should allow plenty of time to appreciate the wonders of our universe before the asteroid potentially slams into Earth, killing us all, in 2182.

Photo: NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona


http://living.msn.com/life-inspired/the-daily-dose-blog-post?post=3be45010-c6c1-4911-8580-bd938934a443

[Shasta56]

That's cool.  Somewhere, out there, is a star named Nettie 77.  My grandkids named it after my daughter's co-worker, Lynette.  Lynette died two years ago from complications of cystic fibrosis.  She was a year older than my daughter.

Thanks for the heads up Sky.  Whisker rub!

Shasta