NASA scientist wants to build a new telescope to defend the Earth from the dangerous space rocks that wiped out the dinosaurs
- The scientist has proposed the Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) to NASA
- These can look for asteroids via the heat emitted telescopes rather than light
- The detection would be more accurate as asteroid light can often be ‘faint’
- It could find asteroids earlier and give scientists time to come up with a strategy
A top NASA asteroid scientist has said that the best way to defend the Earth from asteroids is to build a new telescope capable of spotting them as soon as possible.
Dr Amy Mainzer from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said that trying to spot asteroids with current telescopes was like trying to spot a ‘lump of coal in the night’s sky’.
Her team has proposed a new system designed to spot large meteors capable of causing significant damage.
It would identify incoming asteroids capable of causing huge loss of life – just like the meteor which wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
They claim this would give the scientists more time to come up with a strategy to intercept the rock.
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A NASA scientist has said that to defend the Earth from dangerous asteroids is to detect them via heat using an infra-red telescope called the Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam). Comet Catalina (pictured) in 2015 was captured by such a telescope called NEOWISE
Dr Mainzer cautioned that current telescopes are ineffective when it comes to spotting asteroids until it’s too late to stop them hitting our planet in a potentially catastrophic way.
The Chelyabinsk meteor, which only measured 17 to 20 meters across, caused extensive ground damage and numerous injuries when it exploded on impact with Earth’s atmosphere in February 2013.
While the asteroid that hit Earth killing off the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago was roughly 6 miles (10 km) across.
Detecting these Near-Earth Objects – NEOs in time means preventing such tragedies to human kind, but spotting them in the first place is often the problem.
Dr Mainzer likened finding NEOs in space like spotting a ‘lump of coal in the night’s sky’.
She said: ‘NEOs are intrinsically faint because they are mostly really small and far away from us in space.
‘Add to this the fact that some of them are as dark as printer toner, and trying to spot them against the black of space is very hard.’
Dr Amy Mainzer said that trying to spot asteroids via their ‘faint’ light was like trying to spot a ‘lump of coal in the night’s sky’, but that a proposed Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) mission (pictured) that detects heat waves would make it a lot more accurate
The new camera, being proposed to NASA, would use the latest camera technology to allow astronomers enough time to intercept asteroids and comets on a course for Earth.
This comes after NASA awarded Elon Musk’s SpaceX a £52.7m ($69m) contract to launch an spacecraft to study whether asteroids can be rammed off a collision course with Earth.
Dr Mainzer said: ‘We are proposing to NASA a new telescope, the NEOCam, to do a much more comprehensive job of mapping asteroid locations and measuring their sizes.
‘If we find an object only a few days from impact, it greatly limits our choices, so in our search efforts we’ve focused on finding NEOs when they are further away from Earth, providing the maximum amount of time and opening up a wider range of mitigation possibilities.
Dr Mainzer has proposed a new NEOCam telescope to NASA which she says could prevent similar rocks to that which wiped out the dinosaurs from being future risks to Earth. The picture shown is a collection of images of the asteroid 2305 King by the WISE spacecraft
Their findings from the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) telescope are critical for mounting a defensive strategy against Earth-threatening asteroids.
This including ramming them off-course – but the method needs details of the asteroid’s size and composition, in order to calculate its mass.
Dr Mainzer added a new telescope could also be used to study ancient comets and asteroids.
She said: ‘With the NEOWISE mission we can spot objects regardless of their surface colour, and use it to measure their sizes and other surface properties.
‘These objects are intrinsically interesting because some are thought to be as old as the original material that made up the solar system.
‘One of the things that we have been finding is that NEOs are pretty diverse in composition.’
She said she was now keen to leverage advances in camera technology to aid in the search for NEOs.
Dr Mainzer is the principal investigator of NASA’s asteroid hunting mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
She was due to present her plans to build a new telescope, the Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) to this month’s American Physical Society meeting in Denver, US.
The full report is published in the journal American Physical Society.
