It looks like NASA is getting serious about finding hazardous asteroids

[smp]

From Ars Technica:

"On Monday, NASA's science chief committed to funding a space-based telescope to find the vast majority of near-Earth asteroids that may one day threaten Earth."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09 ... asteroids/

smp

[SkyHiker]

Nice. I thought the LSST was supposed to do that. On the Wikipedia page it claims the same goals, 60% of all NEOs. It can't hurt to have 2 systems.

At the RTMC last weekend I attended a talk about asteroid detection by occultation, as well as a talk about adaptive optics. The LSST is wide field so adaptive optics have no place there, and occultation is the only possibility of detecting asteroids. A space based telescope has an advantage there because adaptive optics are not necessary. On Earth, as a rule of thumb a 10" aperture is the limit w.r.t. resolution - anything larger without AO is just fighting air bubbles and will possibly be worse than 10".

Still, there is a lambda/D limitation that makes direct detection possible only up to that limit. Anything more accurate would have to be done by occultation analysis.

Space is the way to go though if money is no hindrance.

[dcrowson]

SkyHiker,

I'm having trouble following what you're saying above. Are you talking about limits specifically with using the LSST for this or? The PanSTARRS and ATLAS surveys are pointed at the sky every clear (I guess it depends on the moon) night. They directly find asteroids down to around mag 21 or dimmer. There's a program the allows for giving groups access to the (PanSTARRS) data to find and report asteroids using Astrometrica.

I was under the impression that occultations were largely for finding shapes and you have to be at a specific location to see them.

Dan