While the highest honor most engineers receive is typically a professorship or membership in a national academy, Drs. Kyle “Terry” Alfriend and John Junkins have received an unusually high honor—about 186 million miles high. Two main-belt asteroids have been named in honor of the professors and their distinguished work in aerospace.
Having an asteroid named after you is no small feat. There is no way to “apply” for this honor– only an asteroid’s discoverer can propose a name to the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Working Group for Small Body Nomenclature (WGSBN) for approval. According to the IAU, these names typically come from mythological figures, astronomers, names of personal significance to the discoverer, or people who have made significant contributions to their field.
Alfriend and Junkins are being recognized for their outstanding work in aerospace engineering. The professors joined the ranks of scholars like Albert Einstein, Galileo, and Isaac Newton, who all have asteroids named after them.
“This is an honor. I think it's really great for Texas A&M to have not only one but two people in one department at the same time having this happen,” said Alfriend.
Orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter, the asteroids were officially designated on November 25, 2024, by the WGSBN. This group has named nearly 25,000 asteroids, including the newly named asteroids Terryalfriend and Johnjunkins.
The two asteroids have intersecting orbits, much like the intersecting careers of their namesake professors. Both Alfriend and Junkins worked for the government and in industry before moving to academia and have known each other for over 50 years.
“It's really wonderful that Alfriend and I, who have sort of been in neighboring orbits throughout our career, should have asteroids with neighboring orbits forever,” said Junkins
Both professors are members of the National Academy of Engineering and have numerous other accolades, including Junkins serving as Texas A&M's interim president and Alfriend receiving the Goddard Astronautics Award. Despite this, they found it difficult to attribute this honor to any single achievement.
“I can’t attribute this to any one thing,” said Alfriend, “I think it’s basically everything working in spaceflight,”
Junkins, on the other hand, credits a specific side project he worked on in 2004.
“I was teaching celestial mechanics at the time, and I had a really bright student in that class, and he and I became obsessed with this recently discovered asteroid that just missed us,” said Junkins.
Junkins’ work traditionally involves mapping the equations of motion for anything that moves in space, so he applied that knowledge to map the uncertain orbit of the asteroid.
“We did this work without a contract from [NASA] and gave them our results for free. We also mapped out the five or six lowest cost and lowest energy missions to visit this asteroid,” he added.
As Junkins’ most significant contribution to astronomy, this may have attracted the attention of the astronomical community and led to him receiving this honor.
Today, both professors still serve in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and continue to contribute to the field through their research and mentoring Ph.D. students. While increased responsibilities mean the professors collaborate on research less frequently than they used to, the paths of their asteroids will continue to cross for years to come.