Dear WIA-E members,

last march 6th 2019, among the Politecnico di Milano, the award ceremony for the delivery of the titling parchment of Asteroid”24890″ was held to professor Amalia Ercoli Finzi, by the International Astronautical Union (IAU).

During the event, Matt Taylor, Project Scientist of Rosetta mission of the European Space Agency held a seminar on the mission relevance and its important scientific results, focusing on the media aspect that mission produced.

Amalia Ercoli Finzi was the first woman to graduate in Aeronautical Engineering from the Politecnico di Milano, who, with competence and determination, has accomplished a career full of important achievements and successes such as the goldmedal of the Italian Association of Aeronautics.She has also beencalled “the lady of comets” thanks to the Rosetta mission, designed to explore the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, becauseshe was the principal investigator of the SD2 experiment, part of the equipment belonging to the Philae lander.

The 24890 asteroid “Amaliafinzi” is an asteroid that orbitsbetween Mars and Jupiter, discovered in 1996 by italianastronomers Maura Tombelli and Claudio Casacci at the astronomical observatory of the National Institute of Astrophysics. The IAU gave it the name “Amaliafinzi” in honour of the work, carried out by the professor, for the international scientificcommunity in the field of space flight mechanics and the design of space missions as a tribute to her fundamental contribution to the cometary exploration mission.