This article details the global system for detecting, tracking, and predicting the orbits of potentially hazardous asteroids. It highlights the role of observatories, automated software programs, and international collaboration in safeguarding Earth from potential impacts.
Space agencies have systems in place to spot, track, and forecast the future orbits of potentially hazardous asteroids.
One of the key tenets of planetary defense is to find Earthbound asteroids before they find us. Here’s how NASA, ESA and their colleagues pull it off. Sentry uses the gravitational pulls of the Sun and the solar system’s planets to work out the possible future orbits of an asteroid. It can also determine how a force called theNASA's Deep Space Network radio telescopes can ping asteroids with radio waves and measure the radar waves that bounce back to get a sense of what the space rock's surface might look like. This one in Woomera, Australia, was the first deep space station established outside the United States.
Additionally, “2024 YR4 will make another close approach with Earth in 2028, at about 20 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon,” says Farnocchia. “Adding two months of tracking will greatly improve the knowledge of its future position in 2032, and it is likely that an impact in 2032 will be ruled out by the end of this observing window.”, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.
PLANETARY DEFENSE ASTEROIDS SPACE AGENCIES ORBIT PREDICTION OBSERVATORIES
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