“Live” is the name given to asteroid number 66189  by six year old Kajetan Jalochowski., who has won a Warsaw Copernicus Science Centre contest.

The name of the asteroid will now appear in official cosmos atlases. The asteroid “Live” is in the Lion galaxy, some 500 million kilometers from Earth.

The competition jury was impressed by Kajetan’s justification for the name he suggested. With a little help from his parents, he made a short film telling the story of a little boy, about his age, who had to escape Planet Earth after devastating acid rains began to fall there.

The boy in the story turns into an asteroid, moving through our solar system.

Making the, admittedly low-tech,  film was simple, the boy says. “I only needed a drawing pad, a few blue plastic bags and scissors,” he told journalists.

Kajetan is fascinated with astronomy and was happy when the contest jury presented him with a telescope.

He and twenty other children, whose work won praise, were able to talk to astronomers at the ARRIS orbital station. They wanted to know what the astronauts ate, whether they could use a knife and a fork and how they knew whether it was day or night. Their questions were patiently answered by Belgium’s Frank de Winne. (kk)

Source; IAR