Asteroid

Asteroid

Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

 37452 Spirit was discovered on September 24, 1960 by Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld

Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld

Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld is a Dutch astronomer.In a jointly-credited trio with Tom Gehrels and her husband Cornelis Johannes van Houten, she was an extremely prolific discoverer of many thousands of asteroids...

, Cornelis Johannes van Houten

Cornelis Johannes van Houten

Cornelis Johannes van Houten was a Dutch astronomer, sometimes referred to as Kees van Houten.Born in The Hague, he spent his entire career at Leiden University except for a brief period as research assistant at Yerkes Observatory...

, and Tom Gehrels

Tom Gehrels

Tom Gehrels , was an American astronomer, Professor Planetary Sciences, and Astronomer at the University of Arizona, Tucson....

. The asteroid was spotted by examining photographic plates of images taken by telescope

Telescope

A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation . The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s , using glass lenses...

s at the Palomar Observatory

Palomar Observatory

Palomar Observatory is a privately owned observatory located in San Diego County, California, southeast of Pasadena's Mount Wilson Observatory, in the Palomar Mountain Range. At approximately elevation, it is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology...

. 37452 Spirit is part of a small group of asteroids that make up the Hilda family

Hilda family

The Hilda asteroids consists of asteroids with a semi-major axis between 3.7 AU and 4.2 AU, an eccentricity less than 0.3, and an inclination less than 20°. They do not form a true asteroid family, in the sense that they do not descend from a common parent object. Instead, this is a dynamical...

, located between Mars

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...

 and Jupiter

Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

. The asteroids share a 3:2 orbital resonance

Orbital resonance

In celestial mechanics, an orbital resonance occurs when two orbiting bodies exert a regular, periodic gravitational influence on each other, usually due to their orbital periods being related by a ratio of two small integers. Orbital resonances greatly enhance the mutual gravitational influence of...

 with Jupiter, meaning that for every 2 orbits Jupiter completes around the Sun

Sun

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...

, the asteroids will complete 3 orbits. It has a diameter of approximately 4–9 km (2.5–6 mi) and takes about 7.9 years to orbit the Sun. The asteroid's orbit does not cross the path of any of the planets and therefore will not be pulled out of orbit by Jupiter's gravitational field. As a result of this, it's likely that the asteroid will remain in a stable orbit for thousands of years.

On October 11, 2004, following a proposal by van Houten-Groeneveld in 2002 it was renamed in honour of the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.

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