Identify asteroids to lead near Earth

Scientists were able to accurately determine the size of the 2009BD NEO asteroid to lead closer to Earth.

>>>NASA identifies three goals in the asteroid 'catch' project

Recently, scientists from the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics - Smithsonian, in conjunction with businesses actively build plans to 'capture' and exploit asteroids in orbit near Earth.

Commercially, these asteroids are of interest because they are rich in minerals, including rare metals. For science, they are very interesting, because ancient asteroids can help identify the stages of the solar system's development.

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Scientists plan to capture asteroids at the Lagrange point in the Earth - Moon system. This is the point, where small bodies when next to two large celestial bodies will be attracted to make almost 'motionless' , so that scientists can easily survey them.

Currently, the NEO 2009BD is the brightest candidate in the list of asteroids concerned by scientists. This is an asteroid discovered on January 16, 2009, when it traversed the Earth at a distance of 0.008 astronomical units (an astronomical unit by the distance from the Earth to the Sun). By 2022, this asteroid will fly close to Earth.

NASA experts are planning to capture it. By infrared cameras of the Spitzer telescope IRAS, they determined that the diameter of this asteroid is only about 2.9 meters, although they want the maximum asteroid diameter to be captured to be 7-10m.