Asteroid (101955) 1999 RQ36 now has the new, friendly name "Bennu", thanks to a nine-year-old student from North Carolina (USA). Which is good news, because the asteroid now called Bennu will soon have a visitor! In 2016 the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will fly out to the asteroid and bring us back some samples to help us understand planetary formation and even the origins of life.
The name is the winning entry of an international student contest, Name an Asteroid, in which the Planetary Society offered students under the age of 18 the chance to come up with a cooler name for Asteroid 1999 RQ36.
The winner was Michael Puzio, a 3rd grade student from North Carolina, who suggested the name because he imagined the sample mechanism arm and solar panels on the OSIRIS-REx spacefraft looked like the like neck and wings in drawings of Bennu. According to ancient Egyptian mythology Bennu is a version of the phoenix and the soul of the Sun-God Ra, usually depicted as a grey heron.
When Puzio learned he had won the contest, he said, "It's great! I'm the first kid I know that named part of the solar system!"
More than 8,000 students from dozens of countries around the world entered the competition, submitting their chosen name along with a short explanation of their choice. The competition partners included the University of Arizona; the Planetary Society; and the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey, who assembled a review panel to select the winner and send the winner’s name to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which officially governs the naming of all big and small objects in the solar system
For more information about the winning entry you can read the original press release here, or to learn about the OSIRIS-REx mission visit the website.
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