Washington: Memories of the seven Columbia astronauts, including India-born Kalpana Chawla, who perished when the space shuttle disintegrated mid-air on February 1, 2003, have been etched permanently in space with seven asteroids being named after them.

The space memorials dedicated to Kalpana Chawla, Rick Husband, William McCool, Laurel Clarke, David Brown, Michael Anderson and Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon would be easily found from Earth, a release from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which proposed the dedications, said.

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the organisation which clears all asteroid data, released the dedications on August 6.

The seven asteroids, with diameters ranging between five and seven kms, were discovered at the Palomar Observatory on the nights of July 19-21, 2001 by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronomer Eleanor Helin.

"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 names of the asteroids have been approved by the International Astronomical Union.

Asteroids orbit the sun like the rest of the planets, but are small, irregular in shape. Most asteroids orbit in a belt between the planets Mars and Jupiter.

PTI