What asteroid is named after a physicist who is a founding member of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics?
57868 Pupin 57868 Pupin, provisional designation 2001 YD, is a dark Erigonian asteroid and slow rotator from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 3.5 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 17 December 2001, by astronomers of Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) at the Palomar Observatory in California, United States. The asteroid was name after Serbian–American physicist Mihajlo Pupin.
Marco Polo (spacecraft) Marco Polo was a proposed space mission concept studied between 2005 and 2015 that would return a sample of material to Earth from the surface of a Near Earth asteroid (NEA) for detailed study in laboratories. It was first proposed to the European Space Agency in collaboration with the Japan aerospace exploration agency JAXA. The concept was rejected four times between 2007 and 2015 for the Cosmic Vision programme "M" medium-class missions.