To the Stars We Return: Asteroid Named in Memory of Aggie Evan Millsap

Utah State University alum Evan Millsap (BS’18, Geology) was a passionate scholar, whom faculty mentors and classmates describe as an inspiring student both in and out of the classroom.

USU Geosciences faculty mentor Tammy Rittenour says Millsap, who died in a rock-climbing accident in 2019 at age 27, was “intelligent, mature, inquisitive and friendly.”

“Evan was unique,” says Rittenour, professor in the Department of Geosciences. “He had an amazing passion for science, research, adventure and life.”

July 3 marks the second anniversary of the Springville, Utah native’s passing and, with the help of the International Astronomy Union’s Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature, his family, friends and fellow astronomy enthusiasts will celebrate the Aggie’s life with the naming of a main belt asteroid in his memory.

David Rankin, an Arizona scientist, photographer and employee of Arizona State University’s Catalina Sky Survey, nominated Millsap for the naming honor. Rankin met Millsap, while collaborating with the USU scholar and his mentor Rittenour, professor in USU’s Department of Geosciences, on a research project in southern Utah. Millsap was awarded a 2018 USU Undergraduate Research and Creative Opportunities (URCO) grant to pursue the project, which involved examination of mammoth remains near the tiny community of Big Water, north of Page, Arizona. The team’s efforts in dating the remains revealed they belonged to one of the oldest mammoth discoveries in Utah.

The asteroid, (366252) Evanmillsap=2012 XJ, was announced in the IAU’s June 16, 2021, WGSBN Bulletin, with the citation, “Evan D. Millsap (1992–2019) was a passionate geologist and aspiring paleontologist. He was a well-traveled citizen of the world and accomplished mountaineer. Evan had a love of family, culture, science, and deep time.”

Located in a belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, (366252) Evanmillsap=2012 XJ measures about 1.5 miles in diameter. The small body, which is classified as a minor planet, takes about 4.12 years to orbit the sun.

“Evan’s rock is likely a remnant of a failed planet from the solar system’s formation some four billion years ago,” Rankin says.

Each number in the asteroid name holds significance, he says. The “3” refers to the three Mezozoic periods, the age of the dinosaurs. The “66” refers to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event about 66 million year ago, when a massive asteroid impact is thought to have struck the Earth. The “252” refers to the first evidence of dinosaurs some 252 million years ago.

Rankin says having an asteroid named in honor of someone is a distinct honor. Unlike stars, for which no central authority recognizes names, the IAU is the only authority to allow the naming of minor planets. In addition, only the people or program crediting with discovering an asteroid are allowed to propose a name for the body. Rankin, as an employee of CSS, which discovered Millsap’s asteroid in 2006, was permitted to put his friend’s name forward to the IAU.

“Evan and I stayed in touch after we worked on the southern Utah project and he started his graduate studies,” Rankin says. “It really shook me when he died. It was such a tragedy to lose someone that young and bright so early.”

Millsap was honored by Utah State’s Office of Research in October 2019, with the establishment of the Evan Millsap Memorial URCO Grant. The grant is awarded to top-ranking USU Geosciences undergraduate researchers, whose URCO proposals “meet the standard that Millsap set in his own research.”

Following graduation from USU as a magna cum laude honoree, Millsap traveled to the University of Alaska Fairbanks to pursue a doctorate in vertebrate paleontology. During his graduate work, which involved exploratory research of Late Cretaceous fossils in Arctic Alaska, he described a new species of dinosaur, which he was preparing to publish.

Described in his obituary as “a citizen of the world,” Millsap was a foreign exchange student in Germany and a missionary in Sweden. Fluent in German and Swedish and conversational in Turkish and Spanish, he enjoyed world travel. His interests beyond paleontology ranged from Nordic runes and sustainable agriculture to cartography and writing.

Of his young adult years, Millsap wrote, “This decade has been gut-wrenching, beautiful, fantastic, rewarding, sad and bittersweet, but never boring. I’m so grateful for the journey.”