Gold
Asteroid Number 4955
Discovered Discovered September 17, 1990 by H. E. Holt at Palomar
Named in honor of Rob Gold (b. 1943), who has made many contributions to space science through numerous spacecraft missions including Ulysses, Geotail, Delta Star and ACE. Rob is currently the payload manager for the NEAR mission, the first spacecraft bound to orbit a minor planet. Rob played a key role in insuring that the six science instruments on NEAR were delivered and integrated on time and under cost for NASA's first Discovery class mission. Name proposed by J. Veverka and citation written by M. Robinson.