"Haryana's Karnal Students Recognized by NASA for Asteroid Discovery".
Awards
Twelve students and two teachers from Dyal Singh Public School in Karnal, Haryana, have been recognized by NASA's International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC) for their discovery of a Main-Belt Asteroid (MBA) TD40. The asteroid was identified using data from the pan-STARRS telescope, operated by the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, USA.
- Diksha, a Class XI student, along with her team "Aryabhatta" consisting of 11 classmates, received IASC certificates for their discovery and registration of 11 near-Earth objects. The team worked under the guidance of Principal Sushma Devgun and Dr. Kaveri Chauhan.
Main Point :- (i) The students dedicated two years to their work, receiving expert guidance and utilizing free online software. As a result, an asteroid will be named after Diksha, making it the first time a school in Haryana has had an asteroid named in honor of a student.
(ii) Among the 11 solar system objects discovered by the team, one has been classified by the IASC as a provisional Main-Belt Asteroid (MBA).
(iii) MBAs are asteroids that orbit the Sun within the asteroid belt, a region between Mars and Jupiter's orbits, located approximately 2.1 to 3.3 astronomical units (AU), or roughly 195 to 307 million miles, from the Sun.
About NASA
Founder: Dwight D. Eisenhower
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