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Scientists have taken much better of our cosmic-wood neck over the past two decades, as shown in a new video from NASA.
The animation maps all near-Earth asteroids (NEA) – space rocks that lie about 30 million miles (50 million kilometers) from the orbit of our planet – from 1999 to January 2018 , in steps of 10 years.
The differences are striking. In 1999, the identified NEA speckled the internal solar system into fine particles. Many others were discovered in 2009, and the area of the Earth seems absolutely overwhelmed in the current part of the video. [In Pictures: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids]
But even this last image does not communicate how close the space to the Earth is congested. Astronomers have detected only 18,000 near-Earth objects (NEO, a classification that also includes comets) to date, out of a population estimated at millions.
NASA scientists found and tracked about 95 percent of potential civilizations – rocks at least 1 km wide – and none of them threatens the earth in the foreseeable future.
The NEO's observations program of the space agency is also working to discover track 90% of NEOs at least 450 feet (140 meters) wide by 2020 – a very ambitious goal set by the Congress in 2005. It would take a miracle for NASA to do it according to the prescribed schedule; scientists estimate that only a third of the 450 feet have been spotted to date.
The NEO Observer Program, established in 1998, is responsible for nearly 90% of NASA's 18,000 NASA discoveries.
The research and data analysis center of the program is the Near-Earth Objects Research Center (NEOS), which is located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. (CNEOS was originally known as the Near-Earth Object Program Office, the name was changed in 2016.)
"We calculate high-precision orbits for all asteroids and comets and map their positions in the solar system, to detect potential impacts, and back to see where they have been in the sky, "said CNEOS director Paul Chodas in a statement released Monday, July 23. "We provide the best orbital map for all known small bodies in the solar system."
The recently released video also maps all known asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it's a sight to behold. According to NASA researchers, the belt is home to the vast majority of known space rocks, whose current figure is 780,000.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us on @Spacedotcom Facebook or Google+. Originally posted on Space.com
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