A NASA scientist asteroid wants to build a telescope to defend the Earth from dangerous space rocks

NASA's top scientist, a top scientist, said the best way to protect the Earth from asteroids is to build a new telescope that can spot them as quickly as possible.

Dr. Amy Mainzer, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Said that trying to spot asteroids with current telescopes was tantamount to trying to spot a "coal block in the night sky" .

His team proposed a new system designed to spot large meteors capable of causing significant damage.

This would identify incoming asteroids capable of causing enormous loss of life – just like the meteor that wiped out dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

They claim that it would give scientists more time to develop a strategy for intercepting the rock.

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Dr. Mainzer warned that current telescopes are ineffective at detecting asteroids until it is too late to prevent them from hitting our planet in potentially catastrophic ways.

The Chelyabinsk meteor, which measured only 17 to 20 meters wide, caused extensive ground damage and many injuries when it exploded during the impact with the atmosphere. of Earth in February 2013.

While the asteroid that hit Earth killing dinosaurs about 65 million years ago was about 10 km (6 miles).

Detect these Near-Earth Objects – NEOs mean that such tragedies should not affect humanity, but identifying them at the outset is often the problem.

Dr. Mainzer compared NEO's research in space as the discovery of a "block of coal in the night sky".

She said: "NEOs are intrinsically weak because they are mostly very small and far from us in space.

"Add to that the fact that some of them are as dark as the toner of the printer and it is very difficult to try to spot them in the dark of space."

The new camera, proposed to NASA, would use the latest camera technology to give astronomers enough time to intercept asteroids and comets on a course for the Earth.

This comes after NASA awarded SpaceX of Elon Musk a £ 52.7m ($ 69m) contract to launch a spacecraft to investigate whether asteroids could be ejected from a collision with the Earth.

Dr. Mainzer said, "We are proposing to NASA a new telescope, NEOCam, to do a much more comprehensive job of mapping asteroid locations and measuring their size.

"If we find an object just days away from the impact, it significantly limits our choices. Therefore, in our research efforts, we focused on NEO's research when they are further away from the Earth, thus offering maximum time and greater openness. range of mitigation opportunities.

Their discoveries made with the NEOWISE (Wide Area-Earth Infrared Infrared Investigator) telescope are essential for the implementation of a strategy of defense against asteroids threatening the Earth.

This includes their takeoff – but the method requires details on the size and composition of the asteroid, in order to calculate its mass.

Dr. Mainzer added that a new telescope could also be used to study ancient comets and asteroids.

She said, "With the NEOWISE mission, we can spot objects of any surface color and use them to measure their sizes and other surface properties.

"These objects are intrinsically interesting because we think that some of them are as old as the original material that made up the solar system.

"One of the things we've discovered is that the composition of the company's senior management is very diverse."

She added that she now wants to take advantage of advances in camera technology to make NEO's research easier.

Dr. Mainzer is the principal investigator of NASA's Asteroid Hunting Mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

She was to present her project to build a new telescope, the Earth-Near-Earth Camera (NEOCam), at the American Physical Society meeting in Denver, USA this month. .

The full report is published in the journal American Physical Society.