That Asteroid has a Name!
In 2016, NASA will launch a spacecraft that will return the largest sample of an extraterrestrial object since the lunar missions ended over 35 years ago. The target of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission will be a primitive asteroid with the assigned designation (101955) 1999 RQ36. Believing the asteroid deserved a more memorable name, the OSIRIS-REx team, led by the University of Arizona, partnered with The Planetary Society and
MIT Lincoln Laboratory (discoverers of the asteroid) to sponsor a contest to rename the asteroid. Over 8,000 students from over twenty-five countries around the world entered the Name that Asteroid! contest. The International Astronomical Union approved the name, Bennu, this month.
Judges enjoyed reading through the imaginative and informative entries. Dante Lauretta, Principal Investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission and one of the judges said, “There were many excellent entries that would be a fitting name and provide us an opportunity to educate the world about the exciting nature of our mission.” Despite all the excellent choices, the judges had to narrow it to one, and now, the asteroid formerly known as (101955) 1999 RQ36 has its new official name — (101955) Bennu (pronounced ben-oo).
Winning contestant, Mike Puzio, age 9, suggested that the large heron-like Touch-and-Go Sample Mechanism (TAGSAM) arm and winged OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made him think of Bennu. Puzio wrote “The winged OSIRIS-REx and its heron-like TAGSAM evoke attributes of Bennu, as does the egg shape of the asteroid itself.”
Bennu was an important avian deity in ancient Egypt and one of the symbols of the god Osiris. Egyptians usually depicted Bennu as a gray heron. The double nature of asteroids delivering life’s molecules and sometimes bringing destruction such as the recent fall in Chelyabinsk, Russia, inspired the mission name, OSIRIS-REx, and now the asteroid’s name.
The heron-TAGSAM and egg-asteroid parallels weren’t the only similarities that struck the judges. The god Bennu was commonly associated with the gods Atum, the primeval deity, and Re, the Sun god. Astronomers think that the OSIRIS-REx target asteroid is a primitive object that dates back to the creation of the Solar System because earthly analogues for the asteroid Bennu are carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, which have compositions very similar to that of the Sun. Indeed, our own long-lived Solar System was “reborn” from the remnants of stellar explosions over 4.5 Billion years ago. So origins, rebirth and duality are all part of the story of this asteroid.
This contest was a partnership among NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, The Planetary Society and Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) asteroid survey. Contestants submitted one name along with a short explanation for their choice to The Planetary Society. Names were required to comply with naming guidelines from the Minor Planet Center.
Bruce Betts, Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, and another judge in the contest, commented on the new name. “Bennu struck a chord with many of us right away. While there were many great entries, the similarity between the image of the heron and the TAGSAM arm of OSIRIS-REx was a clever choice. The parallel with asteroids as both bringers of life and as destructive forces in the Solar System also created a great opportunity to teach.”
The partners assembled a panel to review the submissions and to submit a top choice to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Committee for Small Body Nomenclature. The IAU approved and assigned the name.
“We are so impressed with the quality of the contest entries that we have decided to recommend four runner-up submissions as names for other minor planets discovered by the LINEAR program. The names Muninn, Nabu, Polymatheia and Ragnarok will be submitted to the IAU as recommended names.” said judge Grant Stokes, head of the Aerospace Division at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and principal investigator for the LINEAR program. Students living in the United States and Brazil provided these four names. Perhaps robotic spacecraft will one day visit these asteroids too.
The OSIRIS-REx mission has invited the contest winner and four runners-up to provide messages on the microchip that will travel to Bennu and return on the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The microchip will contain names of thousands of people from around the world. Watch for more information about this activity in Fall 2013.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will launch in 2016, rendezvous with Bennu in 2018 and take a sample in 2019. The spacecraft will return a small sample of the asteroid to Earth in 2023. The OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission will return knowledge from a type of asteroid never before visited, a carbonaceous asteroid. The information about the composition of Bennu and its orbit will enable us to explore our past and secure our future.
"It is really neat that a young student of astronomy got to name our target asteroid - I am sure that Michael learned a lot about 'what's in a name,' and he and the other contestants will never think about planet and asteroid names the same way again. I know we won’t!" remarked judge Beth Clark of Ithaca College.
For more information about the contest, visit:
To hear more about the discovery of (101955) Bennu, watch two of the OSIRIS-REx team members recount their astronomical observations of the asteroid, before it was called Bennu.
NASA Spacecraft Will Visit Asteroid with New Name
WASHINGTON -- An asteroid that will be explored by a NASA spacecraft has a new name, thanks to a third-grade student in North Carolina.
NASA's Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will visit the asteroid now called Bennu, named after an important ancient Egyptian avian deity. OSIRIS-Rex is scheduled to launch in 2016, rendezvous with Bennu in 2018 and return a sample of the asteroid to Earth in 2023.
The name for the carbon-rich asteroid, designated in the scientific community as (101955) 1999 RQ36, is the winning entry in an international student contest. Nine-year-old Michael Puzio suggested the name because he imagined the Touch-and-Go Sample Mechanism (TAGSAM) arm and solar panels on OSIRIS-REx look like the neck and wings in drawings of Bennu, which Egyptians usually depicted as a gray heron. Puzio wrote the name suits the asteroid because it means "the ascending one," or "to shine."
TAGSAM will collect a sample from Bennu and store it for return to Earth. The sample could hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of water and organic molecules that may have contributed to the development of life on Earth. The mission will be a vital part of NASA's plans to find, study, capture and relocate an asteroid for exploration by astronauts. NASA recently announced an asteroid initiative proposing a strategy to leverage human and robotic activities for the first human mission to an asteroid while also accelerating efforts to improve detection and characterization of asteroids.
"There were many excellent entries that would be fitting names and provide us an opportunity to educate the world about the exciting nature of our mission," said Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona in Tucson, a contest judge and the principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission. "The information about the composition of Bennu and the nature of its orbit will enable us to explore our past and better understand our future."
More than 8,000 students, all younger than 18, from more than 25 countries worldwide entered the "Name that Asteroid!" contest last year. Each contestant submitted one name with a maximum of 16 characters and a short explanation for the name.
The contest was a partnership with The Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif.; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Mass.; and the University of Arizona. The partners assembled a panel to review the submissions and submit a top choice to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Committee for Small Body Nomenclature. The IAU is the governing body that officially names a celestial object.
"Bennu struck a chord with many of us right away," said Bruce Betts, director of projects for the Planetary Society and a contest judge. "While there were many great entries, the similarity between the image of the heron and the TAGSAM arm of OSIRIS-REx was a clever choice. The parallel with asteroids as both bringers of life and as destructive forces in the solar system also created a great opportunity to teach."
The Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Program survey team discovered the asteroid in 1999, early in NASA's Near-Earth Objects Observation Program, which detects and catalogs near-Earth asteroids and comets.
"The samples of Bennu returned by OSIRIS-REx will allow scientists to peer into the origin of the solar system and gain insights into the origin of life," said Jason Dworkin, an OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Goddard will provide overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. The University of Arizona is the principal investigator institution. Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver will build the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages New Frontiers for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information on OSIRIS-REx, visit:
For information about the contest, visit
For more information about NASA's other asteroid-related missions, visit:
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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