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NASA’sasteroidmonitoring organisation has been upgrade so that it can scan the entire night sky once every 24 hours for potentially hazardous infinite rock that are heading our way .
The Asteroid terrene - wallop Last Alert System ( ATLAS ) is of the essence for trailing of asteroids and dust that could be on a hit course withEarth , and it is operated from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii . ATLAS began as an regalia of just two telescopes in Hawaii , but it has now expanded to include two more telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere — give it a staring view of the sky .
The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) has been upgraded to scan the entire sky for asteroids.
The new telescopes in the array are site in Chile and South Africa and , along with the two original Hawaiian telescopes , can envision a clump of the night sky 100 sentence larger than the fullmoon(as viewed from Earth ) in a single exposure . This will give astronomers an unprecedented upperhand in blot potentially dangerous near - Earth objects ( NEOs ) week ahead of possible impact .
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" An of import part of planetary defence is finding asteroid before they regain us , so if necessary , we can get them before they get us , " Kelly Fast , the Near - Earth Object Observations Program Manager for NASA ’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office , tell in a financial statement . " With the addition of these two telescopes , ATLAS is now subject of searching the entire drear sky every 24 time of day , making it an important asset for NASA ’s continuous effort to find , trail and supervise NEOs . "
NASA currently know the locating and orbit of roughly 28,000 asteroid ; since it came online in 2017 , ATLAS has notice more than 700 near - Earth asteroids and 66 comet . Two of the asteroids detected by ATLAS , 2019 MO and 2018 LA , in reality hit Earth , the former exploding off the south coast of Puerto Rico and the latter landing near the moulding of Botswana and South Africa . Fortunately , the two asteroids were small and did n’t induce any damage .
While the majority of near - Earth objects are n’t as cataclysmal as the comet that have in the 2021 satiric disaster movie " Do n’t Look Up , " there are still plenty of scourge asteroid impacts in recent history to warrant the enlargement of monitoring . In March 2021 , a bowling ball - sized meteor exploded over Vermont with the force out of 440 British pound ( 200 kilograms ) of TNT , Live Science previously report ; but those pyrotechnic have nothing on the most explosive recent meteoroid event , which occurred near the fundamental Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013 . As the Chelyabinsk meteor struck the atmosphere , it bring forth a blast roughly equal to around 400 - 500 kilotons of TNT , or 26 to 33 metre the energy released by theHiroshima bomb . Fireballs rained down over the metropolis and its surround , damaging buildings , boom windows and injuring more or less 1,200 people .
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NASA has been stepping up its asteroid catching and refraction efforts in recent yr . Beyond implementing in December 2021 an upgraded impact flight calculator call Sentry - II , the quad agency also launched a one - way mission to crash a ballistic capsule into the distant asteroid Didymos in November 2021,Live Science previously reported . The missionary work — cry Double Asteroid Redirection Test ( DART ) — will appraise the effectiveness of a controlled collision at deflect space Rock , and it could form the basis of a succeeding planetary asteroid defence organisation .
For now , NASA says that it has seen no ground - threatening asteroid , but agency scientist are keep their eyes peeled .
" We have not yet found any significant asteroid wallop threat to Earth , but we keep on to search for that sizable universe we know is still to be recover . Our goal is to find any potential impact years to decades in advance , so it can be fend off with a capableness using technology we already have , like DART , " Lindley Johnson , planetary defense policeman at NASA Headquarters , say in the statement . " DART , NEO Surveyor and ATLAS are all important components of NASA ’s oeuvre to prepare Earth should we ever be faced with an asteroid impact terror . "
Originally put out on Live Science .
