'It is wild!' Asteroid named for University of Texas professor

AUSTIN (KXAN) — "It's not my asteroid. I don't own it," said Maruthi Akella while discussing a newly named asteroid located more than a hundred thousand miles from Earth.

The asteroid's name: Maruthiakella.

"It's now been a few weeks, and I guess it's still kind of in the process of sinking in," Akella said. The University of Texas professor is still awestruck by the honor.

Of the 1.4 million smaller objects discovered by astronomers, only about 2% are named. These objects are formally named by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) through a nomination process.

Akella was nominated by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory senior scientist Ryan Park.

"The people that originally first discover an asteroid, they get a kind of a first place in the line to nominate someone if they want to," Akella said. His asteroid was discovered in 1990 by two Japanese astronomers. They decided not to pick someone, so the asteroid went into a pile until the IAU decided to name it after Akella.

"I just feel so grateful for everything I received," Akella said while crediting his family and colleagues.

Chosen for an asteroid

Akella has worked in the space industry for decades. Besides teaching at the University of Texas, Akella is also helping with man's return to the moon.

"My little contributions, so far, have been the first intuitive machines lunar landing mission, which happened earlier this year. (It was) the first time the U.S. entity made a successful landing back on the lunar surface," he said.

Akella helped develop the guidance system on the lunar lander. He's also working with a team to develop guidance systems for a lunar "hopper."

"The hopper will do many hops across these brutally deep lunar canyons," Akella said. "Some of the hops are even on the range of hundreds of meters, so large hops, and so it should be fun."

Maruthiakella

Akella's asteroid is located in our solar system's asteroid belt. It is 5.5 miles wide and takes three years to orbit the sun.

Akella said that no asteroid that could strike Earth is named after someone on Earth. The ones that are named come with some restrictions.

"Politicians are ruled out. They have to be 100 years, you know, gone. And they can be from anywhere on the planet," Akella said. "They cannot be commercial objects. They cannot be cartoon characters."