"It remains to be seen what the increased NEO discovery efficiency will be, but a perfectly healthy Pan-STARRS would have the capability to increase the NEO discovery rate severalfold over the current rate." "The beginning of Pan-STARRS operations is good news for the NEO community," says Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program office. Objects of that class may exceed 100,000 in number, and even a four-telescope Pan-STARRS would not be able to find 90 percent of them as soon as Congress has requested notwithstanding the addition of other telescopes, the 2020 deadline will almost certainly pass without the goal being met. A 140-meter asteroid impact would not wipe out civilization but, with a wallop greater than the largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated, could bring serious regional destruction. PS1 will also contribute to meeting a more ambitious Congressional goal-that NASA chart 90 percent of all asteroids larger than 140 meters by 2020. None of the known near-Earth objects is projected to collide with Earth in the foreseeable future. The original 2008 deadline for that task has passed, but the job is nearly done-current estimates peg the catalogued population at about 86 percent of the total number of kilometer-size asteroids that pass near Earth. With its large field of view, a 1.4-gigapixel digital camera, and a sophisticated data system that indexes hundreds of images a night and compares them to identify moving objects, Pan-STARRS 1 should help to finally retire the Congressionally mandated goal that NASA catalogue at least 90 percent of the estimated population of near-Earth objects (NEOs) larger than a kilometer. Pan-STARRS' operators predict that the telescope will complete a survey of the sky visible from Hawaii-about three quarters of the entire sky-three times a month. "In terms of survey power, we're the biggest telescope in the world," says PS1's director, Ken Chambers, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy (IfA).
NASA ASTEROID WATCH FULL
Its view encompasses seven square degrees at once-about 35 times the area of the full moon and more than four times as much sky as is visible to the telescope used in the influential Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which began in 2000. Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) is a modest-size telescope, just 1.8 meters in diameter, but it has an extremely wide field of view, making it an ideal instrument for surveying. The first of four telescopes planned for the Pan-STARRS project, short for Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, began a dedicated survey of the sky May 13. PT: The headline has been changed to specify that the mission will no longer launch in 2022.A new sentry is on guard atop the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii, scanning the skies for potentially threatening asteroids and comets. The space agency said it is looking into other options for the mission.Ĭlarification at 9 p.m. The hope is that the expedition can provide insight into the detailed makeup of the object and its origins.Īnother NASA mission named Janus, which is designed to study twin binary asteroid systems, was slated to ride along on the Falcon Heavy launch. The mission's destination is an odd asteroid officially named 16 Psyche that has such a high composition of metals that some scientists speculate it may actually be the core of an ancient planet. "The decision to delay the launch wasn't easy, but it is the right one."
We must get it right," Leshin said in a statement. "Flying to a distant metal-rich asteroid, using Mars for a gravity assist on the way there, takes incredible precision. The delay means that launch will not happen until 2023 or 2024, and the spacecraft will not arrive at Psyche until 2029 or 2030. "We have no known problems with the GNC software, we just haven't been able to test it," Elkins-Tanton said, referencing the guidance, navigation and control system.
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