NASA’s Wants New Asteroid-Tracking Telescope To Boost Planetary Defense

NASA announced that it intends to build a new space telescope that will be mainly used to track asteroids that are on a collision course with Earth. The space agency made the announcement after its budget for planetary defense was increased.

For years, astronomers have been warning about the devastating effects that an asteroid will have on Earth. They also noted that the asteroid impact that triggered an extinction-level event 66 million years ago is bound to happen again.

In response to the cosmic threat, NASA and other space agencies around the globe depend on early-warning systems that are geared toward detecting asteroids that are potentially hazardous. Unfortunately, as NASA previously admitted, these systems sometimes fail to detect asteroids that could hit Earth.

Recently, the agency announced that its Science Mission Directorate allocated a budget of $150 million for planetary defense. According to NASA, it intends to use the budget to improve its systems as well as build a new asteroid-hunting space telescope, Space.com reported.

The agency noted that the new telescope will rely on infrared light, which is a better way of detecting approaching asteroids. It will also be based on a previously proposed mission known as NEOCam.

As a scientific mission, NEOCam was designed to collect statistical data from near-Earth objects. Unfortunately, the mission was abandoned after failing to secure a proper budget.

For NASA’s new initiative, it will refer to the framework of NEOCam. But instead of using it for scientific purposes, the new mission will be used primarily for planetary defense. The main difference between these two objectives is that the scientific aspect of NEOCam is only focused on getting a general sense of what asteroids are.

A planetary defense objective, on the other hand, will allow NASA to map out the trajectories of all asteroids. This way, the agency will be able to identify which asteroids might approach Earth.

The exact details of NASA’s proposed space telescope are still unknown but according to Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, the mission will last about five years following its launch. He said this will give enough NASA enough time to detect at least 65% of the massive asteroids currently lurking in space.