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NASA Names an Asteroid After 'Star Trek' Actor Wil Wheaton (cnet.com)
"An asteroid going boldly through the universe now carries a new name that honors actor Will Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation," reports CNET. An anonymous reader quotes their article.
The announcement showed up on Twitter Wednesday from NASA's Ron Baalke, who describes himself as a "space explorer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory". Wheaton is in good company with other Star Trek alumni. Asteroid 7307 Takei is named for Sulu actor George Takei and 68410 Nichols gets its name from Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura. There's also asteroid 4659 Roddenberry for Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.
"Today, I found out that I kind of get to be in space and live right here on Earth..." Wheaton wrote on his blog Wednesday, describing his life-long interest in space exploration. "As soon as it gets dark here, I'm going to walk out into my backyard, look up into the sky, just a little above Sirius, and know that, even though I can't see it with my naked eye, it's out there, and it's named after me."
"Today, I found out that I kind of get to be in space and live right here on Earth..." Wheaton wrote on his blog Wednesday, describing his life-long interest in space exploration. "As soon as it gets dark here, I'm going to walk out into my backyard, look up into the sky, just a little above Sirius, and know that, even though I can't see it with my naked eye, it's out there, and it's named after me."
Huh, I'd expect the asteroid to be called "Wheaton", like they did with asteroids "Takei", "Nichols", "Roddenberry", but instead they went with "Wilwheaton". I guess it's not bad, just a bit strange ;)
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Didn't Wheaton leave Star Trek because he didn't like the work and thought it was holding back his career?
He apologized for that at a convention with most of the TNG cast there; it's on Youtube somewhere. And it's not like his concerns were entirely ungrounded given the hatred his character generated (which came as a surprise to me when I found out, perhaps because I was much younger than he was when I first watched TNG.)