NASA Names Asteroid after Iranian Scientist

“Tonight at NASA/JPL farewell party I learned that they have named an asteroid after me!! I was overwhelmed,” Naderi wrote in a post on his Facebook account, adding that “asteroid formerly known as (5515) 1989 EL1 will henceforth be known as asteroid ‘Naderi’.”

The asteroid was discovered by late American astronomer Eleanor F. Helin at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County California on March 5, 1989, and is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) in diameter. It rotates about itself every 5.2 hours and orbits the Sun every 4.4 years.

The asteroid Naderi is among numerous other minor celestial bodies orbiting the Sun roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. This crowd of asteroids is called the main asteroid belt, the total mass of which is almost four percent of the Moon, or 22 percent of Pluto.

“Fortunately, it is not an Earth crosser,” Naderi further said, adding that a curious fact about the asteroid is that “its orbit is a little more eccentric than most asteroids in the main belt.”

During the last 36 years, Naderi managed or oversaw numerous projects in NASA, including JPL's robotic solar system mission to Jupiter's moon Europa, Cassini orbiter at Saturn, and the Dawn spacecraft at the giant asteroid Vesta.

“It will be going around the Sun for billions of years after I am gone,” Naderi further said about the asteroid.