Zoozve got its name when Latif Nasser convinced Brian Skiff to submit a proposal to make a transcribing error official to Gareth Williams, who acts as secretary for the International Astronomical Union’s working group on solar system small-body nomenclature.
Latif Nasser, co-host of the popular science podcast Radiolab. Nasser was trying to track down the origin of an odd name he had seen on an artistic poster of the solar system that was hanging on the wall of his two-year-old son’s bedroom. The poster seemed to show that Venus had a moon, whose name was labeled as “zoozve”. Nasser made some calls to astronomers at NASA, who confirmed his suspicion that no, Venus does not have a moon. Perplexed, he kept digging to try to figure out where the odd object with the odd name had come from.
He eventually tracked down the poster’s creator, artist Alex Foster, in Margate, UK, who was also taken by surprise by the question. They eventually figured out what had happened: Foster had found the name of the asteroid, 2002VE, on a list of solar system moons somewhere online (he doesn’t remember where). When transferring it to his poster, he misread his own handwriting, and instead entered it on the poster as ZOOZVE. Mystery solved.
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Initially crestfallen, Nasser, who is known for his persistence, told Skiff the whole story about the poster and the mistaken reading of the sloppy notes that resulted in the odd name, and about the odd and unusual nature of the object’s orbit — and he won him over. Nasser ended up writing up the formal proposal (which is limited to 360 characters), and Skiff and the observatory agreed to formally submit it to Gareth Williams (Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian), who acts as secretary for the International Astronomical Union’s working group on solar system small-body nomenclature.
(524522) Zoozve = 2002 VE68 Discovery: 2002-11-11 / LONEOS / Anderson Mesa / 699
This object is the first-identified quasi-satellite of a major planet (Venus). When artist Alex Foster drew this object on a solar system poster for children, he mistook the initial characters of the provisional designation as letters, thus coining an odd and memorable moniker. Name suggested by Latif Nasser.