14-Year-Old Girls From Surat Make Startling Discovery, Find Earth Bound Asteroid Near Mars

Two teenage girls from Surat, Gujarat have discovered an Earthbound asteroid near planet Mars. The discovery was made by analysing images from the telescope at the University of Hawaii.

**EDS: BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE**Surat: Vaidehi Vekariya Sanjaybhai (R) and Radhika Lakhani Prafulbhahas, class 10 students, who jointly helped discover a near-Earth asteroid, which has been christened as HLV2514 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in Surat, Monday, July 27, 2020. (PTI Photo)(PTI27-07-2020_000210B)

New Delhi: An earth-bound asteroid is looming near planet Mars and this discovery was made by two 14-year-old girls from Surat, Gujarat. Vaidehi Vekariya and Radhika Lakhani who received their training from a private organisation SPACE India found the celestial object after spending hours looking at images from the Pan-STARRS telescope in the University of Hawaii.  According to a report by Reuters, the asteroid is supposed to cross earth’s orbit Earth in about one million years’ time. “I look forward to... when we will get a chance to name the asteroid,” said Vekariya who aims to become an astronaut in the report. Both are students of PP Savani Chaitanya Vidya Sankul and are deeply interested in science. “I don’t even have a TV at home so that I can concentrate on my studies,” said Lakhani one of the students who discovered the asteroid. They made the discovery while being part of the asteroid search campaign conducted by the organisation along with the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC) which is a NASA-affiliated citizen scientist group. Specialized software was used to analyse the images and the report said that the discovery was made in June. The IASC director Director J. Patrick Miller has also confirmed the discovery. Space India has said in a Facebook post congratulating the students that the asteroid is ' a Near-Earth Object(NEO) which is currently near planet Mars and over time (~10^6 years) will evolve into an Earth-crossing asteroid.'