A 14-year-old Indian boy from Noida discovers a new asteroid; here’s how NASA reacts

Daksh Malik, a Class 9 student of Noida’s Shiv Nadar School, has been recognised by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for a ‘provisional asteroid discovery,’ which means that the boy will get to pick a permanent name for the asteroid.

The asteroid is currently named ‘2023 OG40,’ with 2023 being the year of its discovery.

“I’ve been fascinated with space…I used to watch all these documentaries on National Geographic about planets and the solar system. This is like a dream come true,” The Print quoted Malik as saying.

Opportunity to ‘discover’ an asteroid

For a year and a half, Malik and two of his school friends, had been hunting for asteroids under the International Asteroid Discovery Project (IADP). They got this opportunity in 2022, when the astronomy club of their school sent an email about the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC).

Under the IASC, a citizen science programme affiliated to NASA, people – including students – from around the world can ‘discover’ asteroids for the US space agency.

IADP, which is conducted by the organisation STEM & Space, along with the IASC, has over 6,000 participants every year from around the world, of whom only a few are able to discover new asteroids.

The IASC website states that before Daksh, five other students from India had managed to discover a named asteroid.

‘A fun exercise’

In what Malik described as a ‘fun exercise,’ the three friends, like other participants, had to download IASA’s datasets, calibrate them on the Astronomica software, and then observe for any celestial objects likely to be asteroids.

Also, they had to be on the look out for any kind of movement in an object, in addition to checking if the light being emitted from it falls within the limit for asteroids.

“I felt like I was working at NASA,” Malik joked to the website.

He added that NASA will take 4-5 years to run initial tests and complete their verification for the asteroid, and only then will he get to name it.

The boy has names such as ‘Destroyer of the World,’ ‘Countdown’ in his mind.