Passed NASA technical review… Target to identify 90% of deployments over 140m by 2028
A next-generation infrared space telescope is being prepared to thoroughly search for nearby asteroids or comets that might threaten the Earth.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on the 26th, the space telescope for capturing asteroids and comets that are at risk of colliding with the Earth but are still hidden in the dark has recently passed a technical and practical review and is being materialized into the design and molding stages.
This space telescope, named ‘Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor’, aims to find more than 90% of near-Earth objects over 140m that approach within 30 million miles (48 million km) of Earth’s orbit. there is.
This is a goal that the US Congress demanded of NASA in a 2005 law.
It is estimated that there are regarding 26,000 near-Earth astronomical objects with a height of 140 m or more that can create a crater of 1 to 2 km when colliding with the Earth and destroy a large city.
However, less than half of the 10,000 double orbits have been identified, and they are being discovered very slowly, one per day.
At the current telescope level, it is expected to take another 30 years, but it is expected that the time will be much earlier if the ‘Neo Surveyor’ is put into operation.
“Neo Surveyor represents NASA’s next-generation capability to rapidly capture, track and characterize near-Earth objects of potential danger,” said NASA Earth Defense Officer Lindley Johnson. Infrared telescopes in space will be the greatest advantage enabling Earth defense strategies.”
The Neo Surveyor, which will be operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), is the first space telescope exclusively for asteroid exploration.
At the second Lagrangian point, it is in the opposite position to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which looks the farthest and deepest into the universe.
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Neo Surveyor observes asteroids and comets approaching Earth with infrared wavelengths invisible to the human eye.
Infrared wavelengths are blocked in the atmosphere, so large telescopes on the ground cannot match the performance of Neo Surveyor, which has an aperture of only 50 cm.
Neo-Surveyor has the advantage of not only being able to find dark asteroids and comets with very little solar visible light reflection (albedo), but also finding dangerous astronomical objects approaching the Earth from the sun, hiding in the sunlight.
“For the first time in Earth’s history, Earth members are developing a way to protect Earth by changing the trajectory of dangerous asteroids,” said Professor Amy Mainz of the University of Arizona, who chaired the Neo-Surveyor mission review committee. I have to pay, but Neo Surveyor will be a game changer in this endeavor.”
Currently, ‘Neo Wise’, a ‘wide area infrared probe’ (WISE) deployed in low-Earth orbit, is in charge of the near-Earth dangerous object.
It was launched for astronomical observation in 2009 and completed a mission that lasted regarding 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 rays, it is expected that the Neo Surveyor, which is being developed as a space telescope specializing in asteroid search through a hull heat shield that interferes with observation, will achieve much better results.
/yunhap news
