"I like to think that in the years, decades and millennia ahead, people will look to the heavens, locate these seven celestial sentinels and remember the sacrifice made by the Columbia astronauts," said Raymond Bambery, head investigator of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's asteroid tracking project in Pasadena, California.

The Columbia's commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool, mission specialists Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon died on February 1.

As they re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, their Shuttle disintegrated 200,000 feet over Texas.

The asteroids were discovered at the Palomar observatory near San Diego, California on July 19-21 2001 by NASA astronomer Eleanor Helin.

The names have been approved by the International Astronomical Union.

Asteroids orbit the sun like the rest of the Solar System's planets, but are small, irregular in shape and most orbit in a belt between the planets Mars and Jupiter.

SPACE.WIRE