Japanese space agency JAXA needs your help in naming a silicon-based asteroid giant about the size of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The researchers are looking for any – ‘non-offensive’ – suggestions, of 16 characters or less, that are better than the current name: 2001 CC21.
The campaign, which ends May 9, comes ahead of JAXA’s plans to fly its Hayabusa2 spacecraft past the stony, approximately 1,300- to 1,800-foot-long near-Earth asteroid in July 2026.
The winning name joins asteroid 162173 Ryugu, named after a magical underwater ‘Dragon Palace’ from Japanese folklore; 101955 Bennu, named after a bird from Egyptian mythology; and many more in orbit around our solar system.
Japanese space agency JAXA needs your help in naming a silicon-based asteroid giant about the size of the Golden Gate Bridge. The campaign comes ahead of JAXA’s plans to fly their Hayabusa2 spacecraft (pictured above) past the stony, nearly 550-meter-long object.
JAXA researchers are looking for any – ‘non-offensive’ – suggestions, 16 characters long or less, and better than the current name of the S-type asteroid: 2001 CC21. After May 9, the winning name will join Bennu, named after the Egyptian mythological bird, and many more in orbit
Asteroid 2001 CC21 orbits the sun once every 383.1 days, or 1.05 years, just slightly longer than Earth’s orbit around the sun.
Although its distance from the space rock qualifies it as a “near-Earth object,” by the standards of NASA’s science definition teamthe asteroid only comes as close as 0.08 astronomical units, or 7,436,465 miles, from Earth’s orbit.
Those millions of kilometers are a healthy, safe distance for an asteroid like 2001 CC21, which is larger than 97 percent of known asteroids – but small compared to the largest known giants in our solar system, such as the record-holder ‘dwarf planet’. 1 Ceres.
Ceres, which orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter and carries a load of salty ice, is 900 kilometers long and weighs an estimated 1,035 tons (939,300 kg), making it more than 1,700 times larger than 2001 CC21 .
Japanese space agency JAXA has given the Hayabusa2 probe its own cartoon mascot, Haya2-kun (above) – whose motto is ‘Do My Best!’ The probe will image the asteroid 2001 CC21 in July 2026
CC21 was first discovered on February 3, 2001 by the US Air Force’s Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project. CC21 has remained nameless for twenty years in 2001.
By 2026, Japan’s Hayabusa2 probe will pass by 2001 CC21, under the asteroid’s new name, flying past at a speed of 5 kilometers per second (11,200 miles per hour).
The new mission – unlike Hayabusa2’s sample collection mission to asteroid Ryugu, where it launched a copper cannonball to smash and collect samples – will only capture high-quality images of 2001 CC21 from as close as it can get.
But for those who want to lay claim to the 2001 CC21 name, JAXA notes that their competition will adhere to strict rules Guidelines of the International Astronomical Union.
The new mission – unlike Hayabusa’s sample-collecting mission to asteroid Ryugu, where it launched a copper cannonball to smash and collect samples – will only allow high-quality images of 2001 CC21 at close range.
Scientists hope that Hayabusa2’s asteroid missions, such as the upcoming 2001 voyage to image CC21, will provide clues about what the solar system looked like at its birth about 4.6 billion years ago
Hayabusa2’s 2019 mission to the asteroid Ryugu (above) had a price tag of about 30 billion yen ($270 million) and made history by creating the first man-made crater on an asteroid
For starters, the international organization frowns on names that are unpronounceable, offensive or longer than sixteen alphabetic characters.
The ideal name consists of only one word and ‘not too similar to an existing name of a minor planet or natural planetary satellite.’
The guidelines encourage submitters not to submit the names of their pets or names of commercial brands.
They also said that the names of any political or military leader or event in history, no matter how beloved, are “unsuitable until 100 years after the death of the individual or event.”
‘Objects that approach or cross the Earth’s orbit (so-called Near Earth Asteroids or Near Earth Objects: NEOs) are generally given mythological names’ JAXA noted in a statement announcing the campaign.
“That said, there are exceptions to this rule,” they noted, “such as asteroid Itokawa.”
‘So you are also welcome to suggest a name outside of mythology.’
The potentially dangerous 25143 Itokawa was discovered in 1998 by a U.S. Air Force LINEAR threat assessment program and named in 2009 in honor of Japanese rocket engineer Hideo Itokawa.
Aspiring campaign winners should note that observations of CC21 from 2001 suggest it has an elongated shape, similar to Itokawa, as opposed to the roughly spherical meatball shape of asteroids like Ryugu.
Previously successful asteroid names, including 128 Nemesis, 16 Psyche and 48 Doris, come from characters in Greek mythology.
Others, like 324 Bamberga, named after the German city of Bamberg, or 511 Davida, named after Amherst astronomy professor David Peck Todd, were given a personal name more related to their discovery.
JAXA said interested parties can submit their asteroid name ideas online via their form, as long as they are ‘non-offensive’, through May 9.