[meteorite-list] Asteroid Named After JHU Applied Physics Lab (132524 APL)

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/2007/05mar07/05aplroc.html

APL Rocks! Asteroid Named After JHU Applied Physics Lab
By Michael Buckley
Applied Physics Laboratory
March 5, 2007 | Vol. 36 No. 24

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.

New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest
Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., proposed the name to the IAU.
"It's nice to see APL get its name enshrined in space," Stern says. "It
was long overdue."

Dated Jan. 6, the IAU citation announcing the name identifies APL as the
developer of "numerous space missions" such as NEAR to asteroid Eros,
MESSENGER to Mercury and New Horizons to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. APL
made space history in 2000-2001 with NEAR, or Near Earth Asteroid
Rendezvous, which was the first spacecraft to orbit and then land on an
asteroid.

Walt Faulconer, APL's Civilian Space Business Area executive, said, "As
the organization that first landed a spacecraft on an asteroid on behalf
of NASA, it's fitting recognition to now have an asteroid named APL.
It's also exciting that it's an asteroid we saw with our New Horizons
spacecraft on its journey to Pluto. We'll have to plan a mission to
'APL' someday."

Asteroid APL was discovered in May 2002 by the Lincoln Laboratory
Near-Earth Asteroid Research Team at Socorro, N.M. To track its path in
space, go to: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db_shm?des=132524 .