Explore Five Minor Planets That Are Named After Indians: Learn About Their Remarkable Achievements
To have a celestial body named after you is a massive honor, and these Indians and their remarkable achievements in various fields convinced the International Astronomical Union to name minor planets after them.
The International Astronomical Union recently named four minor planets after four Indian geniuses with remarkable achievements under their belt. WGSBN (Working Group Small Bodies Nomenclature), a working group of the International Astronomical Union, named the minor planets Ashokverma, Rutuparekh, Kumar, and Aswinsekhar. Apart from these planets, there are more celestial objects that are named after Indians. Read on to explore!
Sainudeen Pattazhy – “Sainudeen”
NASA named 5178 No CD4—a minor planet—after Sainudeen Pattazhy, the Kerala zoology professor, for his phenomenal research and campaigns on the environment that include health issues caused by mobile phone towers, red rain, the eco-biology of trees with religious significance and biological control of mosquitoes.
Anish Mukherjee – “25629Mukherjee”
When Anish Mukherjee was just 16, he observed the large-scale uncontrolled bottle tampering issue in India. He obtained a solution from auto-disposable syringes—which can be used just once—and he implemented that to create bottle caps for one-time use only. His smart design idea allowed customers to find out if the bottle was previously tampered with. This smart invention resulted in the renaming of 2000 AH52 (a minor planet) to 25629 Mukherjee.
Madhav Pathak – “12509Pathak”
Madhav Pathak altered the traditional Braille slate—allowing writing to become easier for those who are visually impaired. Learning Braille is not easy: visually impaired people have to memorize over 300 dot combinations since they require one set of combinations for writing and another set for reading. Madhav made modifications to the traditional Braille slate, enabling blind students to easily write and read the language. For this contribution, planet 12509 Pathak is named after him.
Akshat Singhal – “Singhal”
After Akshat realized that the process of indexing documents on a computer is extremely annoying, he created a system using Artificial Intelligence to automate the process of categorizing documents and also deriving relations between them. This achievement resulted in the naming of a minor planet 12599 Singhal. This celestial body lies alongside planets like 8749 Beatles, 7000 Curie, and 2001 Einstein.
Vishnu Jayaprakash – “Jayaprakash”
In 2010, a class 12 student from Chennai, Vishnu Jayaprakash, illustrated the creation of a microbial cell—fueled by cow dung and affordable graphite electrodes. The planet that is named after this genius boy is known as 25620 Jayaprakash. This young student aimed to diminish the power costs for 700,000 villages in India. Later, he conducted extensive research on renewable energy technologies and is currently focusing on MFC (Microbial Fuel Cell) technology.
Indians and their groundbreaking innovations and discoveries are reaching space, and we mean quite literally!
