mineralogy. In 1997, NASA added 773 Irmintraud and eventually over one million other names to a microchip placed on board the Stardust spacecraft that launched February 7, 1999. Placing the names onto the Stardust spacecraft was a public outreach effort. In particular, this served to promote public interest, awareness and support of the space program. In September 2001, there was speculation that Tagish Lake meteorite which struck in British Columbia, Canada on January 18, 2000, was derived from a D-type asteroid, since the spectral shape and brightness of the meteorite was similar to D-type asteroids. Of the three studied, the 0.032 IRAS albedos (8) of 368 Haidea and the 0.033 IRAS albedos (8) of 773 Irmintraud are both considered close to the reflectance of the Tagish Lake meteorite. Moreover, even though 368 Haidea was closest spectrally to the Tagish Lake meteorite, 773 Irmintraud was no more than 0.034 AU to a chaotic zone associated with one of the Kirkwood gaps due to the mean motion resonance with Jupiter. This made 773 Irmintraud the closest of the three candidates to the associated chaotic zone and thus the most likely of the three as the source of the 2000 Earth impacted meteorite. The idea that humans held a piece of the asteroid 773 Irmintraud spurred others to act. In 2002, the University of Tokyo performed near-infrared photometric and spectroscopic observations of 773. In addition, the University obtained an accurate lightcurve in Japan through visible photometry and ultimately found a gap between K- and L-band spectra. From this, the university concluded that results support the idea that Tagish Lake meteorite has a link with D-type asteroids. On May 22, 2007, at 06:07 UT, Irmintraud occulted TYC 4908-00263-1, a 10.7 magnitude star in the constellation Sextans, for observers along a path across New Zealand. References External links NASA Target Catalog Information () Lightcurve plot of 773 Irmintraud, Palmer Divide Observatory, B. D. Warner (2005) Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB), query form (info ) Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Google books Asteroids and comets rotation curves, CdR – Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets (1)-(5000) – Minor Planet Center 000773 Discoveries by Franz Kaiser Named minor planets Natural history of British Columbia Natural history of Yukon 000773 000773 19131222