Astronomers To Develop New Telescopes For Killer Asteroid Search

DEEP IMPACT

New Hawaiian Telescopes Will Search For Killer Asteroids

if something this big hit us Earth would probably end up with a new moon after the ring of debris thrown into orbit coalesced

Los Angeles - Oct 09, 2002
Astronomers at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA) have been awarded a $3.4 million grant by the Air Force Research Laboratories to design a new observatory to survey the entire sky and detect very faint objects.

The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) is currently conceived of as an array of small telescopes, and sites on either the Big Island or on Maui are being considered. Planned to become operational in 2006, Pan-STARRS will be more powerful for survey work than all existing telescopes combined. A major goal of the project is to identify and track asteroids that might collide with Earth.

Commenting on the project, IfA Director Rolf Kudritzki said, "I am pleased that the Institute will be able to play an important role in finding these hazardous asteroids that threaten humanity."

Exploiting recent advances in electronic detector technology, Pan-STARRS will have revolutionary optical sensors with billions of pixels, or picture elements. The IfA is collaborating with Lincoln Laboratories of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop the advanced detectors.

The telescopes will have a very large field of view, allowing them to image an area about 30-40 times that of the full moon in a single exposure. The system will rapidly survey large areas of the sky, making it uniquely powerful for detecting transient objects such as supernovae, and for detecting moving objects, such as asteroids.

Once operational, Pan-STARRS will generate huge quantities of data. To process these, the IfA astronomers have teamed up with the Maui High Performance Computer Center (MHPCC), and with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a leader in the field of massive databases.

The huge database generated by Pan-STARRS will be made available over the Internet so that others may use it for education and research. Kudritzki commented that the Pan-STARRS database will be "a unique opportunity for education."

The currently favored design is an array of four relatively small telescopes. This would permit rapid construction, and would have a small environmental impact, because the system would be very compact. In fact, one possibility being explored is to house the system within the university's existing telescope building on Mauna Kea.

The IfA is working closely with the Office of Mauna Kea Management, and in accord with the design review process set out in the Mauna Kea Science Reserve Master Plan, to develop a design that minimizes environmental and cultural impacts.

The data from Pan-STARRS will be used to address many scientific questions, ranging from the origin of the Solar System to the properties of the Universe on the largest scales. However, a major goal of the project is to make an inventory of potentially dangerous asteroids.

It is now widely recognized that a collision with a large asteroid was responsible for the mass extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and that more frequent collisions with smaller asteroids present a real hazard. Fatal asteroid collisions are rare, but when they happen they can be very destructive. In fact, experts have determined that, averaged over time, the risk of dying from an asteroid strike is approximately that of dying in a plane crash. A number of recent widely publicized close encounters with asteroids have highlighted the risk.

Congress has charged NASA to support searches for "killer asteroids." These surveys determine the orbits of the asteroids that they discover, and then project them forward to see if they will impact Earth. Pan-STARRS principal investigator Nick Kaiser comments that "current surveys have detected roughly half of the objects bigger than a mile in diameter. Impacts of this size cause global-scale catastrophes. Pan-STARRS will help complete this task and will extend the search to much smaller objects."

DEEP IMPACT

We Need More Telescopes NEO Hunter Tells Congress

Washington - Oct 04, 2002
A Cornell University astronomer told a House of Representatives space subcommittee today that Washington should spend $125 million for a new type of ground-based telescope that could detect hundreds of asteroids and numerous comets that pose a potential threat to the Earth from space over the next century.

Earth In Never Ending Game Of Cosmic Roulette With Asteroids

Washington - Oct 03, 2002
Scientists are making progress in cataloguing and tracking large near-earth objects (NEOs), but a serious threat still remains from smaller objects, an expert panel told the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee today.

Near-Earth Objects Pose Threat, General Says

Washington - Sep 17, 2002
This summer, much of the world watched as India and Pakistan faced-off over the disputed Kashmir region, worried that the showdown could escalate into a nuclear war.

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