NASA’s ATLAS, a planetary defense system that scans the sky for near-Earth objects, has been upgraded to search the entire night sky—half of it in either hemisphereonce every 24 hours. The surveillance system is vital for tracking objects like asteroids and debris that are on a collision course with Earth., and is operated by the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy.
“An important part of planetary defense is finding asteroids before they find us, so if necessary, we can get them before they get us,” said Kelly Fast, Near-Earth Object Observations Program Manager for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, in an . “With the addition of these two telescopes, ATLAS is now capable of searching the entire night sky every 24 hours, making it an important asset for NASA’s continuous effort to find, track, and monitor NEOs.”China let a rocket make an uncontrolled reentry to the planet
; it eventually fell into the Pacific Ocean. But natural debris is a more common concern. Since its inception, the system has discovered over 700 near-Earth asteroids, 72 of which were considered potentially hazardous, as well as 66 comets. Two asteroids spotted by ATLAS eventually impacted Earth. It’s not just cataclysmic impacts like the one that finished off the dinosaurs that we need to be wary of. In 2013 a
This is indeed excellent news for planetarians. For upgrading NASA astroid detector for observing the sky every day, and informing adverse activities to the planet, and a warning system for the planet. Professor Isagholian, Astronomy and physics
And by entire sky, they mean they will attempt to scan a very small portion of the sky from all angles.
Look up!☄️
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