Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

ASTEROID NAMES AND DISCOVERY V4.0

Metadata Updated: August 22, 2025

This data set includes names, designations, and discovery circumstances for the numbered asteroids, sorted in order of number. This data set supercedes past versions of both the ASTNAMES and DISCOVER asteroid data sets. It represents an extension of a file originally prepared by Pilcher (1979) [PILCHER1979] for the Tucson Revised Index of Asteroid Data (TRIAD) and updated in Pilcher (1989) [PILCHER1989] for the Asteroids II database. The data for asteroids numbered 4045 and greater were either provided by the Minor Planet Center or extracted from the Minor Planet Circulars, which are published by the Minor Planet Center on behalf of Commission 20 of the International Astronomical Union. In some cases, an institution or survey is credited with the discovery rather than an individual. No attempt has been made to correct the inconsistencies in the presentation of names (that is, some names are given with initials and some are not), or in the way locations are specified (for example, Pilcher distinguishes between the Lowell Observatory and Anderson Mesa locations in Flagstaff).

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: us-pd

Downloads & Resources

References

https://pds.nasa.gov

Dates

Metadata Created Date January 31, 2023
Metadata Updated Date August 22, 2025
Data Update Frequency irregular

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date January 31, 2023
Metadata Updated Date August 22, 2025
Publisher National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Maintainer
Identifier urn:nasa:pds:context_pds3:data_set:data_set.ear-a-5-ddr-astnames-discovery-v4.0_y5yr-s9k8
Data First Published 2021-05-21
Data Last Modified 2025-07-17
Category Earth Science
Public Access Level public
Data Update Frequency irregular
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 12332c1b-a8a8-4ae0-bb09-1308b1f93c24
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://pds.nasa.gov/ds-view/pds/viewDataset.jsp?dsid=EAR-A-5-DDR-ASTNAMES-DISCOVERY-V4.0
License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
Program Code 026:005
Related Documents https://pds.nasa.gov
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 4dbf63050a1f3d9f66c05217e9271501894cd86cc15889d7d5d05a0d2d9a1a94
Source Schema Version 1.1

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.