At the recent Asteroids, Comets, Meteors conference, the official naming of minor planets were commemorated. Amongst those honoured were CSIRO’s Shinji Horiuchi, in recognition of his contribution to the study of minor bodies of the solar system. Shinji is the lead scientist of the Southern Hemisphere Asteroid radar Program (SHARP), and has led bistatic radar efforts from the southern hemisphere, leveraging VLBI and radio-astronomy expertise. Asteroid (20385) Horiuchi was originally designated 1998 KS53 and was discovered on 1998-May-23 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project near Socorro, New Mexico. Between 1998 and 2012, LINEAR using meter-class ground-based deep-space surveillance-type telescopes, discovering 2,487 Near Earth Objects and over 229,000 main-belt asteroids. Shinji is pictured above with JPL Planetary Radar Scientist, Marina Brozovic.
