Palestinian students in Nicaragua discover new asteroid

Two Palestinians students at a high school in Nicaragua were part of a team that made the first identification of an asteroid in 2012, envoys said Tuesday. Othman Salameh and Othman Al-Khafash joined three classmates to identify the asteroid, which is located between Jupiter and Mars, the Palestinian embassy in Nicaragua said in a statement. The students determined the coordinates of the asteroid, which is 1,598 astronomical units from Earth. Their school, the Pierre and Marie Currie School in Las Colinas Managua, has now been asked to join the Hardin-Simmons University International Astronomical Collaboration, which encourages students to search for asteroids.