NASA launches space telescope to detect deadly asteroids

An artistic concept of NEOCAM's asteroid hunting mission.NASA / JPL-Caltech

NASA is finally taking seriously a major threat to life on Earth.

The administrators announced Monday that the agency plans to launch a space telescope to monitor dangerous asteroids as part of its global defense strategy.

The telescope will use infrared radiation to detect the heat of rocks crossing the space. For the moment, NASA's administrators call it the Near-Earth Objects Monitoring Mission (NEOSM).

"It's a big step forward to think about human destiny, because dinosaurs certainly did not have an asteroid surveillance program to protect themselves," said Business Insider Richard Binzel, asteroid researcher and planetary science professor at MIT. "Knowing what is happening there is something that the global scientific community has been advocating for almost 30 years, so it's a decisive decade in creation."

The new NASA mission is expected to cost between $ 500 million and $ 600 million. It could be launched as early as 2025, although it is not an official calendar.

"We are finally in a position to be able to say that we are ready to go forward," said Lori Glaze, director of the agency's planetary science division, at a meeting of the NASA committee. "It's really a big problem to be at this point."

"The defense of the planet is something we must deal with"

NASA / Don Davis

Any space rock whose orbit takes it within 200 million kilometers of the sun is considered a NEO object (near-Earth object). Up to now, humanity has located about 15,500 objects of this type.

The goal of NEO monitoring is to avoid a surprise like the one that dinosaurs had 65 million years ago, when an asteroid 6 miles apart was the most important thing in the world. is crushed on the surface of the Earth. The impact caused a tsunami, causing wildfires and releasing billions of tons of sulfur into the atmosphere, hiding the sun for years. It was the end of the age of the big lizards.

But until now, scientists have forgotten a lot of bulky and dangerous objects that have approached the Earth. In 2013, a meteor measuring 20 meters in diameter and moving at 40,000 mph entered the atmosphere and exploded above Chelyabinsk in central Russia. The explosion caused a shock wave that broke windows and damaged buildings in the area, causing more than 1,400 injuries.

According to NASA modeling, an event like Chelyabinsk's meteor takes place every 60 years or so. On the same day, another larger asteroid arrived 17,000 miles from Earth.

The Chelyabinsk meteor is seen crossing the Russian sky.AP

"The space reminds us from time to time that, yes, on a historical time scale, the defense of the planet is something that we have to face," said Thomas Zurbuchen, assistant administrator at NASA, at the committee meeting.

Space sent us another reminder of this type in July, when an asteroid "city killer" of a width of 427 feet flew 45,000 miles from the Earth.

NASA had almost nothing to warn about this rock, because for the moment, scientists can only locate a NEO by pointing a telescope in the right place at the right time. Telescopes detect sunlight reflected by asteroids, but the smaller the asteroid, the less it reflects; In addition, some asteroids are simply not very reflective.

"Luck is not a plan, and so far we are counting on luck," Binzel said.

NASA hopes to solve this problem with the NEOSM telescope. The agency has not yet published any design plans or official timelines for the project, but said it would build on previous plans for a similar mission, called NEOCam, which has never been fully funded. The NEOCam telescope would have orbited Earth and swept the sky in search of NEOs greater than 140 meters (460 feet) – large enough to cause regional damage if the object crushed onto the Earth.

Similarly, the new Asteroid Hunting Telescope provides infrared heat sensing sensors that can detect even the darkest asteroids, which are the hardest to find. (Because space rocks are warmed by the sun, they emit infrared light, even if they are too dark for ground-based telescopes to see.) Infrared sensors will also allow the telescope to measure shape, size, composition and orbit. incoming objects.

NASA's Wide Area Field (WISE) telescope, which has been in operation for 8 years, uses a similar approach to infrared surveillance to find at least 230 near-Earth objects.

An artist concept shows the explorer of wide field infrared surveys orbiting the Earth.NASA / JPL-Caltech

However, WISE is less powerful than NEOCam would have been, its field of view is smaller and it relies on an older camera requiring cryogenic cooling. In addition, WISE was not designed solely for hunting asteroids. Its main mission, completed in 2011, was to image the entire sky twice, describing in detail the galaxies, stars and distant asteroids.

"A big step forward"

In 2005, Congress had asked NASA to locate 90% of near-Earth asteroids at least 140 meters wide by 2020. By December, however, telescopes on Earth and in space had detected less than a third of these geo-controlled objects.

The NEOCam proposal was presented in 2006 and again in 2010. NASA chose the 2010 proposal for technology development, but chose to fund other projects for launch when choosing new missions in 2017.

"There was just a stalemate between NASA and Congress on how to do it and pay for it, and what happened today was a huge step forward," he said. Binzel.

The infrared camera sensor for the asteroid hunting mission proposed by NEOCam.Teledyne

He added that the new telescope "sounds like NEOCam in every way except the name".

But there is one essential difference: the new telescope will employ a new team of scientists.

"It's fine to move forward, but when you start changing teams, it creates additional risk," said Business Insider Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute and scientist of the University of Toronto. 39, NEOCam team. "It just increases the likelihood that the best decisions will not be made, which could affect the effectiveness of the mission and the results we will achieve."

Zurbuchen said the project will still involve the NEOCam team. And finally, the decision is a step in the orbiting of an asteroid hunter telescope.

"This is the first time NASA has expressed its commitment to conducting a space survey on asteroids," Binzel said. "They have always said, we will study it, we will study it, and now they say we will do it. "

Dave Mosher contributed to reporting this story.