LOS ANGELES, June 8 — It looks like Leonard Nimoy’s legacy will live long and prosper.
NASA has named the asteroid 4864 Nimoy after the late “Star Trek” actor, Slate reported yesterday.
The asteroid is roughly 10km across and is in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. It orbits the Sun once every 3.9 years.
Slate said, “Its orbit is very slightly elliptical (Spock would no doubt inform you that it has an eccentricity of 0.1778108147152254, with a 1-sigma uncertainty of 6.3351e-08), and orbits the Sun in almost the same plane as Earth.”
In a brief statement, NASA said, “Discovered September 2, 1988 by H. Debehogne at the European Southern Observatory.
“Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015) was an American actor, film director and poet. Best known for his portrayal of the half-Vulcan/half-human science officer Spock in the original “Star Trek” TV series and subsequent movies, Nimoy wrote two autobiographies: I Am Not Spock (1975) and I Am Spock (1995).”
