NASA gives the go-ahead to develop a Near-Earth Object Surveyor telescope to search for potentially dangerous asteroids
The NASA space agency gave the go-ahead to create an infrared telescope Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor (can be translated as "Investigator of near-Earth objects").
The main task of the new spacecraft is to find and analyze the trajectory of potentially dangerous asteroids and other space bodies located within 48 million km from the Earth's orbit.
New satellite and its purpose
So, according to the researcher M. Kelly, use NEO Surveyor will make it possible to find asteroids and other space objects that are potentially dangerous to the Earth. So NEO will be able to detect up to 90% of space bodies with a size of 140 meters or more.
It is worth noting that by 2010, NASA engineers managed to find about 90% of potentially dangerous objects with a size of 1000 meters or more.
After that, according to the National Law on Aeronautics and Space, the agency was ordered detect at least 90% of objects larger than 140 meters and as of the current date such objects have been found about 40%.
So for a long time, every dark time of the day, scientists use optical telescopes to search and register new objects. Ground-based telescopes are capable of working only at night, while the new telescope NEO will operate 24 hours a day.
In addition, NEO infrared sensors will allow you to analyze the space from the direction of the Sun, because on the current moment is a "blank spot" that conventional optical telescopes are simply physically incapable of explore.
Also, the sensors used will make it possible to determine the size and characteristics of the detected objects much more accurately.
Satellite launch NEO according to the plan should take place in 2026, but in the next 2022 NASA will launch in test mode technology for deflecting collisions with asteroids, according to the mission plan "Double redirection asteroids " DART.
Only time will tell how successful the program will be. I would also like to note that for the next 100 years there are no dangerous objects that can collide with the Earth, however there are still unknowns, so such programs are needed to detect a threat as early as possible and prepare for her.
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