The trick is to first identify objects near the Earth – ScienceDaily

To avoid such an impact, Amy Mainzer and her colleagues use a simple but ingenious way to spot these tiny Near Earth objects (NEO) that are heading towards the planet. She is the principal investigator of NASA's asteroid-hunting mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and will describe the work of NASA's Global Defense Coordination Office this week at the meeting. April of the American Physical Society in Denver – including the NEO recognition method of his team and how it will contribute to efforts to prevent future impacts of the Earth.

"If we find an object only days away from the impact, our choices are greatly limited, so in our research efforts, we focused on NEO's research when they are further away from the Earth, thus offering maximum time and a wider range of mitigation possibilities, "said Mainzer.

But it's a difficult task – like spotting a piece of coal in the night sky, Mainzer explained. "The NEOs are inherently weak because they are usually very small and far from us in space," she said. "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."

Instead of using visible light to spot incoming objects, the Mainzer team at JPL / Caltech harnessed a signature NEO signature, their warmth. Asteroids and comets are warmed by the sun and shine brightly with thermal (infrared) wavelengths, making them easier to spot with the NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Infrared Survey Wide) telescope.

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

The discovery of the properties of the NEO surface gives Mainzer and his colleagues an insight into the size and composition of objects, two crucial elements of the defense strategy against a NEO threatening the Earth.

For example, a defensive strategy is to physically "move away" a NEO from an Earth impact path. But to calculate the energy required for this displacement, details about the mass of NEO, and thus the size and composition, are needed.

Astronomers also believe that examining the composition of asteroids will help understand how the solar system has formed.

"These objects are inherently interesting because it is thought that some of them are as old as the original material that made up the solar system," said Mainzer. "One of the things we have discovered is that the composition of the appointed executive officers is very diverse."

Mainzer now wants to take advantage of advances in camera technology to make NEO's search easier. "We are proposing to NASA a new telescope, the Near Earth Camera (NEOCam), to do a much more comprehensive job of mapping asteroid locations and measuring their size," said Mainzer.

NASA is not the only space agency trying to understand near-Earth objects. For example, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Hayabusa 2 mission plans to collect samples of an asteroid. And in his presentation, Mainzer will explain how NASA is collaborating with the global space community as part of an international effort to defend the planet from the impacts of NEO.

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