NASA is developing a telescope capable of saving humanity

Astronomers' work is relatively relativistic: they are studying light that is a million years old, watching stars to observe events that occurred millions of years ago, with tools It took tens of years to develop and build. But will they be able to warn the Earth soon if the catastrophe happens?

That's why we need to accelerate the staring speed, to instantly know what happens in the near future. NASA is developing and planning the NEOCam launcher , an infrared telescope created with just one goal: to observe and detect objects near Earth.

Sketch of NEOCam flying in the Universe.

The threat to human survival can be an asteroid, a small meteorite or anything that flies around the orbit of the Sun and is capable of colliding with the Earth. In the Endless Universe, not a few objects flutter with the ability to completely erase the civilization that exists on Earth, you just look at the dinosaurs clearly.

The above is not speculation, a collision with meteorites is unavoidable and we need to observe what is happening, suggesting the fastest possible solution.

' The question is, when will a collision take place, on a scale large enough to affect people and geology? ', Amy Mainzer, a scientist from the Push Rocket Laboratory at Caltech and one of the NEOCam project participants, said.

The US government does not ignore these warnings. NASA has completed a list of near-Earth asteroids with a diameter greater than 1km; The US Congress requires NASA to list 90% of objects greater than 140 meters in diameter, in preparation for the unfortunate case.

To give an example of a meteorite: the 1908 collision was one of the most thoroughly investigated events we ever had, taking place in the Tunguska region of Russia. According to the analysis, scientists believe that a meteorite about 60 to 190 meters in diameter has caused a 2,000km ² wide forest to be flattened.

This is the most terrible meteorite collision in modern human history.

The US government asked NASA to complete the 'blacklist' before 2020 but it did not seem feasible. In June 2018, Lindley Johnson of the planet defense department (too dreadful title) announced: NASA discovered about 18,000 potentially dangerous objects in space. However, scientists estimate that the number of dangerous objects that have not been detected must be double the 8000 number.

Take for example that we are helpless against giant bodies, Johnson says that if one of these objects is capable of hitting Earth, then with current technology, we need to be warned 10 years in advance. can do something. There are still no specific plans to finalize the US government 'deadline' , NASA said it is still waiting for the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to help complete the method of identifying objects near Earth.

Expected research results will appear in the first half of this year; Soon, NASA will take the final decision on the NEOCam system.

' I don't lose sleep when I think about the collision between Earth and an unidentified celestial body, because the rate of occurrence is very low, but there is still a proportion of it that can happen ', planetary scientist At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Richard Binzel said. ' We have the ability, the responsibility to know what is out there. And basically, the NEOCam system is ready to go into operation. '

Sensor will be mounted on NEOCam.

A system of other probes called IMAP will go up in 2024, carrying a tool to study the solar wind; IMAP's orbit is consistent with the expected orbit of NEOCam, where the ship carries IMAP without space, so it is more likely that the two systems will come up at once. But NEOCam must be completed soon to be able to 'go' by the ship to put IMAP on orbit.

In addition to NEOCam, there is another system capable of detecting objects near Earth, which is the Large Telescope The Large Synoptic Telescope (LSST) . This project is invested by the National Science Foundation, the goal is to place a mirror of the size of a tennis court on a mountain in Chile. It is expected that by 2023, LSST will begin the process of surveying the sky for 10 years. Scientists expect it to collect enough data to find 75% of objects near Earth with a diameter of 140 meters or more.

However, to detect 90% of objects near the Earth, according to the requirements of the US Congress, we need infrared observation devices, and that is the specialty of NEOCam. Infrared observation devices do what terrestrial telescopes can't do: estimate the size of the celestial body. NEOCam will be an effective assistant throughout the LSST process.

LSST sketch.

' I think we ignore the fact that the first phase of the LSST project will be very chaotic, that is when we start to see things fly out there, ' said researcher Binzel. ' Every week, objects with a diameter of 10 meters fly over the Moon's orbit, then we will begin to see how much these objects appear and know how close they are to us .'

LSST will only detect objects close to Earth's orbit, but must resort to NEOCam to classify where the objects are large enough, what is 'gravel'. the ability to erase humanity.

One of the notable proposals for NEOCam is research by Nathan Myhrvold, a physicist and former Microsoft expert. He published a study showing that NASA's data on near-Earth objects was still lacking, in part because of the data source - NEOWISE telescope - not designed to detect celestial bodies. Space.

All objects near Earth were recorded between 1998 and 2018. Currently, we know more than 18,000 such objects and the new detection rate is 40 objects / week.

Amy Mainzer, herself in the NEOWISE project , argued that Myhrvold's research was wrong, that the celestial data obtained was confirmed by independent data from other sources and from simulation models. from independent researchers. Besides, NEOCam is optimized to detect objects near the Earth, with advanced image rendering chips, capable of capturing high-resolution images and working in the extremely cold environment of the Universe.

NEOCam will work for a very long time.

In addition to the goal of 'protecting the Earth' , the collection of celestial celestial data serves other purposes, as well as preparing for future missions. This was the company that considered mining on celestial bodies. According to a survey published last year, most Americans think NASA should spend more time studying celestial bodies, than taking people to Mars.