NASA's Asteroid News: The Space Agency Unveils the Amazing 600-Million-Dollar Asteroid Detection Telescope | Science | New

The telescope was unveiled after an asteroid able to destroy a city almost colliding with the Earth two months ago. Considered an astronomical "near-accident", the asteroid was only detected the day before its entry into the vicinity of the Earth.

Speaking on the asteroid, NASA's planetary defense officer, Lindley Johnson admitted, "This one has sneaked us and it's an interesting story about the limits of our network of polls. "

In addition, Paul Chodas, head of NASA's Near Earth Studies Center, told the Times: "This object has slipped through a whole series of our capture nets."

He added: "I wonder how often this situation has occurred without the asteroid being discovered."

The severity of the near-collision was such that it fired NASA's new telescope to detect planetary rocks from farther away.

The new infrared telescope will be based on a previous concept, NEOCam, which was originally proposed in 2013.

The failure of this project is something, Mr. Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA, was "one of the biggest problems of my work".

In order to receive more funds, the telescope is classified in the category "planetary defense" rather than in "scientific mission".

Fifteen years ago, the US Congress had asked NASA to detect 90% of near – Earth objects more than 140 meters wide by 2020.

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Although no funding has been allocated to the project, 20,000 Named Executive Officers have been cataloged.

According to NASA, however, the new satellite is expected to increase the discovery rate by 65% ​​in the first five years.

This figure could reach around 90% within ten years of its launch.

Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate, said, "I think this is a big step forward, it's something we wanted to do for a long time. "

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In the current state of affairs, the asteroid discovery has been compared to an attempt to spot a "coal block in the night sky," according to astronomer Amy Mainzer, a member of NASA's asteroid fighter mission. in April.

She added, "NEOs are inherently 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."

In 2013, an asteroid exploded above Chelyabinsk in Russia, producing a show wave that damaged thousands of buildings and injured nearly 1,500 people.

The prospect of an infrared telescope associated with the Large Synoptic Telescope, a ground installation under construction in Chile, will eventually strengthen Earth's asteroid defenses and achieve the current objectives.

According to Jay Melosh, a global scientist at Purdue University, asteroids in space required the help of an infrared system to detect them.

He added: "There are a lot of very dark asteroids, which reinforces the need for the infrared system."

Currently, the bulk of NASA's budget is devoted to the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission currently being implemented by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

DART, to be completed by 2021, seeks to test the possibility of deflecting an asteroid's path rather than destroying it.

Although funding is an important issue in the advancement of the agency's defense systems, the mission marks a milestone in NASA's development by taking an external group proposal and adapting it to its internal work.