NASA Technical Review Passed…Goal is to identify 90% of deployments over 140 million by 2028
A modern infrared space telescope is being prepared to precisely search for nearby asteroids or comets that could threaten Earth.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on the 26th, the space telescope to capture asteroids and comets that are in danger of colliding with Earth, but is still hidden in the dark, has recently undergone a technical and operational review and is being fleshed out in the design and molding stages.
This space telescope, called the Near Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, aims to find more than 90% of the near-Earth objects greater than 140 meters high that lie within 30 million miles (48 million kilometers) of Earth’s orbit.
This is the goal that the US Congress demanded of NASA in a 2005 law.
It is estimated that there are about 26,000 NEOs 140 meters or more high that can create a crater 1 to 2 km wide when crashing into the ground and destroy a large city.
However, less than half of the 10,000 double orbitals have been identified and they are being discovered very slowly, about once a day.
At the telescope’s current level, it’s expected to take another 30 years, but it’s expected to be much sooner if the “new surveyor” works.
“The new survey instrument represents NASA’s next-generation ability to capture, track and identify potentially hazardous near-Earth objects,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA Earth Defense Officer. Infrared telescopes in space will be the greatest asset enabling Earth defense strategies.
The Neo Surveyor, which will be operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), is the first space telescope dedicated to asteroid exploration.
At the second Lagrangian point, it is opposite the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which looks farther and deeper into the universe.
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The Neo Surveyor tracks asteroids and comets that approach Earth at infrared wavelengths invisible to the human eye.
Infrared wavelengths are blocked in the atmosphere, so large telescopes on Earth can’t match the performance of the Neo Surveyor, which has an aperture of just 50 cm.
Neo-Surveyor has the advantage of not only being able to find dark asteroids and comets with very little visible light reflection from the Sun (albedo), but also hazardous astronomical objects approaching Earth from the Sun, hidden in sunlight.
“For the first time in Earth’s history, Earth members are developing a way to protect Earth by changing the course of dangerous asteroids,” said Professor Amy Maines of the University of Arizona, who chaired the review committee for the new research mission. You pay, but Neo Surveyor will be a game-changer in this endeavor.”
Currently, “Neo Wise”, the “Wide Field Infrared Probe” (WISE) deployed in low Earth orbit, is responsible for the dangerous near-Earth object.
It was launched for astronomical observations in 2009 and completed a mission that took about a year. Since September 2013, it has been used as a near-Earth astronomical probe.
Although it has achieved results by capturing dangerous asteroids and comets using infrared radiation, the Neo Surveyor, which is being developed as a space telescope that specializes in searching for asteroids through a heat shield in the structure that interferes with observation, should achieve much better results. 🇧🇷
/ yunhap news
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