In 2016, the U.N. General Assembly declared June 30 International Asteroid Day. The Assembly’s decision was made based on a proposal by the Association of Space Explorers, endorsed by the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
If all that’s too out of space, how about the Jet Propulsion Laboratory named an asteroid after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
“Discovered 2000 Nov. 20 by the Lincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Research Team in Socorro. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (b. 1989) was awarded second place in the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for her microbiology project. She attends the Yorktown High School, Yorktown Heights, New York, U.S.A.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who just won a spectacular victory in New York, tweeted:
✔
@Ocasio2018
It’s true!
Science was my first passion. Asteroid named by @MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory in honor of longevity experiments I conducted out of Mt. Sinai.
My research won 2nd place globally in Microbiology at @intel ISEF. At BU I started as science major, changed to Econ #nerdalert
According to Noel Kirkpatrick on Mother Nature Network, 23238 Ocasio-Cortez” is roughly 1.44 miles long and is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Its orbit around the sun, which takes three years, 10 months, nine days and 18 hours to complete, is very stable and has zero chance of destroying the planet unless something decidedly weird happens.”
This was by design, said one source in the Kirkpatrick interview.
“She and Stokes purposefully picked “safe” asteroids. We want to assure all the students that their asteroid will never impact Earth.”
Asteroid Day aims to inform the public about crisis communication actions to be taken at the global level in case of a credible near-Earth object threat.
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