51823 Rickhusband, provisional designation , is a dark Lixiaohua
asteroid
An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere.
...
from the outer regions of the
asteroid belt
The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...
, approximately 9 kilometers in diameter.
It was discovered on 18 July 2001, by astronomers of the
Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking
Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) was a program run by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Astronomical survey, surveying the sky for near-Earth objects. NEAT was conducted from December 1995 until April 2007, at Ground-based Electro-Optica ...
at
Palomar Observatory
Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research observatory in San Diego County, California, United States, in the Palomar Mountain Range. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Research time at the observat ...
in California, United States. The asteroid was named after American astronaut
Rick Husband
Richard Douglas Husband (July 12, 1957 – February 1, 2003) was an American astronaut and fighter pilot. He traveled into space twice: as Pilot of STS-96 and Commander of STS-107. He and the rest of the crew of STS-107 were killed when ''Col ...
, who died in the
Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
The Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disaster was a fatal accident in the United States space program that occurred on February 1, 2003. During the STS-107 mission, Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disintegrated as it reentered the atmosphere over Texa ...
.
Orbit and classification
''Rickhusband'' is a member of the Lixiaohua family, an outer-belt
asteroid family
An asteroid family is a population of asteroids that share similar proper orbital elements, such as semimajor axis, eccentricity, and orbital inclination. The members of the families are thought to be fragments of past asteroid collisions. An a ...
of more than 700 known members, which consists of C- and
X-type asteroid The X-group of asteroids collects together several types with similar spectra, but probably quite different compositions.
Tholen classification
In the Tholen classification the X-group consists of the following types:
* E-type – with high al ...