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NASA approved the launch of a space telescope that could save humanity from an asteroid crash - Daily Mail

NASA approved the launch of a space telescope that could save humanity from an asteroid crash - Daily Mail

NASA approved the launch of a space telescope that could save humanity from an asteroid crash - Daily Mail
Jun 15, 2021 1 min, 27 secs

NASA has approved the Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope to help the space agency be better prepared for future asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth.

The 20-foot-long infrared telescope would help astronomers and planetary scientists find 'most' of the potentially hazardous asteroids and comets that come within 30 million miles of Earth's orbit, also known as near-Earth objects (NEOs).

NASA defines NEOs as 'potentially hazardous' when space objects come within 0.05 astronomical units (4.6 million miles) and measure more than 460 feet (140 meters) in diameter.

'NEO Surveyor will have the capability to rapidly accelerate the rate at which NASA is able to discover asteroids and comets that could pose a hazard to the Earth, and it is being designed to discover 90 percent of asteroids 140 meters in size or larger within a decade of being launched,' said Mike Kelley, NEO Surveyor program scientist at NASA Headquarters, in a statement.

NEO Surveyor is a new mission proposal designed to discover and characterize most of the potentially hazardous asteroids that are near the Earth.

The 20-foot-long infrared telescope would help find 'most' of the potentially hazardous asteroids and comets that come within 30 million miles of Earth's orbit.

Although there are no known threats from 'potentially hazardous' NEOs for the next century, there have been unpredicted impacts, such as the 2013 Chelyabinsk event in Russia.

The NEO Surveyor could help prevent events such as the meteorite in Chelyabinsk, Russia utilizing infrared sensors to help find NEOs faster.

'By searching for NEOs closer to the direction of the Sun, NEO Surveyor would help astronomers discover impact hazards that could approach Earth from the daytime sky,' said Amy Mainzer, survey director for NEO Surveyor at the University of Arizona. .

Meteors, meteoroids and meteorites normally originate from asteroids and comets

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