As space enthusiasts prep to bid goodbye to the rare comet NEOWISE that has been visible almost all through this month, two girls from India have also been looking up but for another celestial body. While the rest of us binge watch Indian Matchmaking or bake yet another batch of banana bread, these 14-year-olds spent the lockdown discovering an earth-bound asteroid. This was announced by SPACE India, an Indian space education institute, on July 25, in a congratulatory tweet.
The two Grade 10 students, Vaidehi Vekariya and Radhika Lakhani, hail from the city of Surat in the western state of Gujarat. They had taken part in a two-month All India Asteroid Search Campaign led by the educational institute in collaboration with International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC), a NASA-affiliated citizen scientist group. The students accomplished the discovery by poring over images from the Pan-STARRS advanced telescope in Hawaii—it has high-grade CCD cameras, and an even higher field of view.
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The asteroid is currently presently near Mars and its orbit is expected to cross that of Earth in about one million years. The asteroid, currently called HLV2514, may be officially christened only after NASA confirms its orbit. “In the last campaign, your team reported HLV2514 as a new asteroid,” said the IASC Director Dr Patrick Miller in an email to the space institute, according to The Times of India. “It is, in fact, a NEO (near-earth object). This NEO is near the planet Mars and over time (~10^6 years), it will become an earth crossing asteroid.”
“We had tagged around 20 objects of which this one proved lucky,” the girls told The Times of India. “We have given it a random name at present and we may get an opportunity to name the asteroid once its orbit is confirmed by NASA. It may, however, take a few years.”
While Vekariya added that she wants to become an astronaut when she’s older, Lakhani said she was working hard on her education right now. “I don’t even have a TV at home, so that I can concentrate on my studies.” India, a country known for championing low-cost space innovations, has earlier seen two schoolboys from Delhi discover two asteroids in little more than a week.
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