<ul class="summary-list"><li>A <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-might-advance-asteroid-hunting-space-telescope-2021-5">NASA space telescope</a> could help <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">track down</a> 90% of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-impact-simulations-difficult-to-stop-2021-5">asteroids</a> big enough to crush New York.</li><li><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword> is finally advancing the <keyword id="81842" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Telescope">telescope</keyword>, called NEO Surveyor, after years of passing it over.</li><li>By passing a key review, the telescope has escaped what one expert called "NASA mission limbo hell."</li></ul><p>NASA is finally moving forward with a <keyword id="41531" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="space">space</keyword> telescope that could spot <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">asteroids heading dangerously close to Earth</a>.</p><p>The Near-Earth Object Surveyor Mission - NEO Surveyor, for short - has passed <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-might-advance-asteroid-hunting-space-telescope-2021-5">a key review</a>, and NASA announced Friday that it's moving it to the next stage of development. Now engineers can start building new parts for the telescope, thereby keeping the mission on track for a 2026 launch.</p><p>"I'm over the moon," Amy Mainzer, who leads the project, told Insider. "We are excited to do our part to help cross the asteroid-impact issue off the world's list of worries."</p><p>To protect the planet from an incoming asteroid, experts estimate they'd <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">need five to 10 years' warning</a> that a space rock was headed our way. Right now, an asteroid could easily approach Earth without anyone seeing it, since telescopes on the ground can only do limited surveillance.</p><p>"What you want to do is find them early, find them as early as possible - as in years, or even decades, before they pose a threat," Paul Chodas, the manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-might-advance-asteroid-hunting-space-telescope-2021-5">previously told Insider</a>. "The dinosaurs didn't have a space program, and look what happened to them. We have a space program. And given enough time, we can do something about this threat."</p><p>NEO Surveyor would help NASA catalogue nearby <keyword id="81841" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Asteroids">asteroids</keyword> and chart their paths through the solar system, so that someday - if necessary - humanity may have a shot at destroying or deflecting any space rocks on a collision path with Earth.</p><p>For years, work on this kind of infrared telescope had been caught in "NASA mission limbo hell," MIT astronomer Richard Binzel <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-might-advance-asteroid-hunting-space-telescope-2021-5">previously told Insider</a>. Now the project is finally moving forward.</p><h2>NASA needs a space telescope to defend Earth from city-crushing asteroids</h2><div type="image" title="asteroid earth fly by" height="2139" width="2852" msid="83450835" hostid="261"></div><p>Experts from around the world <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">practiced for a hypothetical asteroid strike</a> in April. It didn't go well.</p><p>At the Planetary Defense Conference, a group of 200 participants from about two dozen countries worked through a hypothetical scenario in which an asteroid was set to crash into Earth in six months. They determined that no existing technologies could stop the space rock, since the time frame was too short to launch a mission that could destroy or deflect an asteroid.</p><p>Without a space telescope like NEO Surveyor, it's very possible that an asteroid could sneak up on our planet like the one in the April simulation. It has already happened a few times.</p><p>In 2013, a house-sized asteroid screamed into the skies above Chelyabinsk, Russia and exploded. The blast sent out a shock wave that broke windows, damaged buildings, and injured more than 1,400 people. No one on Earth saw it coming. That same day, a <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/02/15/172080937/no-link-between-meteor-that-hurt-hundreds-and-asteroid-about-to-fly-by">larger asteroid</a> came within 17,000 miles of the planet.</p><div type="image" title="asteroid russia Chelyabinsk" height="3744" width="5616" msid="83450836" hostid="261"></div><p>Jim Bridenstine, who served as the Trump administration's NASA Administrator, said in 2019 that the agency's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-threat-of-meteor-crashing-into-earth-is-bigger-than-you-think-2019-5">modeling</a> suggests an event like the Chelyabinsk meteor occurs about every 60 years.</p><p>But the Chelyabinsk rock was small - about 50 feet wide. In 2019, a 427-foot, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-flies-close-to-earth-surprising-scientists-2019-7">"city-killer" space rock</a> flew within 45,000 miles of Earth, and NASA had almost no warning about that either.</p><p>Then last August, an asteroid the size of a car passed closer to Earth than any known space rock had ever come without crashing. It missed our planet by about 1,830 miles. Astronomers didn't know the asteroid existed until about six hours <em>after</em> it whizzed by. Nobody saw it coming, because it was approaching from the direction of the sun.</p><p>Telescopes on the ground can only observe the sky at night, which means they miss almost everything that flies at us from the sun. NEO Surveyor, from its perch in Earth's orbit, would be able to spot such space rocks. Since it would use infrared light, it could also spot asteroids that are too dark for Earth-based telescopes.</p><div type="image" title="asteroid belt vega" height="585" width="1041" msid="83450837" hostid="261"></div><p>Plans for this kind of space telescope have been in the works since 2005, when Congress mandated that NASA find and track 90% of all <keyword id="1821718" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="near-Earth-objects">near-Earth objects</keyword> 140 meters (460 feet) or larger in size. That's big enough to obliterate a city like New York.</p><p>The initial deadline was 2020. But NASA has only spotted about 40% of those objects so far. NEO Surveyor is designed to bring the agency up to its 90% goal within a decade of launch.</p><p>"Every day we wait is one day less that we have the information we need to make a response," said Binzel, who studies potentially hazardous asteroids. "What that means is, for now, we are relying on luck to keep us safe from major <keyword id="2929843" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="asteroid-impacts">asteroid impacts</keyword>. But luck is not a plan."</p><h2>The NEO Surveyor team is forging ahead - maybe with a budget boost</h2><p>Mainzer first submitted the idea for an asteroid-hunting space telescope in 2006. NASA declined to take it on as a mission, funding other projects instead. She submitted proposals in 2010 and 2015 as well, but the agency kept passing.</p><p>NEO Surveyor finally <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-telescope-to-detect-deadly-asteroids-2019-9">became an official NASA mission</a> in 2019. Since then, the project has been in what NASA calls "Phase A" - a stage focusing on design and technology development. Now that they're moving on to Phase B, Mainzer and her team can start building prototypes and developing hardware and software.</p><p>They could soon get a major influx of cash, too. NASA's budget request for 2022 allots <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/fy2022_congressional_justification_nasa_budget_request.pdf">$197 million</a> for planetary defense, including $143 million for NEO Surveyor - though Congress must still approve it.</p><p>That would be a significant increase from the $28 million the mission received in 2021. NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen <a href="https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/nasas-new-neo-mission-will-substantially-reduce-time-to-find-hazardous-asteroids/">estimated</a> in 2019 that developing the telescope could cost about $500 to $600 million in total.</p><p>The budget request and Friday's Phase B approval are "double good <keyword id="6355005" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="news">news</keyword> for citizens of planet Earth," Binzel said, though he added that now, "the ball in squarely in Congress' court."</p><p>"The clock is ticking," Mainzer said. "We really want to get off the ground as quickly as possible."</p><p><em>Aylin Woodward contributed reporting.</em></p>

NASA is finally advancing a space telescope that could track down dangerous asteroids before they strike Earth

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A future <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-telescope-to-detect-deadly-asteroids-2019-9">NASA space telescope</a> could help track down 90% of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">asteroids</a> big enough to crush New York.</li><li>But efforts to launch such an asteroid observatory have failed to advance for years.</li><li>Now, <keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword>'s <keyword id="11370235" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="neo-surveyor-mission">NEO Surveyor mission</keyword> may finally move forward if it passes a key review in the coming weeks.</li></ul><p>An asteroid big enough to wipe out a city could be careening towards Earth right now, and it's very possible nobody would notice until too late.</p><p>As far as we know, that isn't happening - the odds of a large <keyword id="41531" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="space">space</keyword> rock striking the planet are low. Still, researchers agree that it will occur eventually, which is why experts from around the world practiced for this possibility last month.</p><p>The results were unencouraging. At the Planetary Defense Conference, a group of 200 participants from about two dozen countries worked through a hypothetical scenario in which an asteroid was set to crash into Earth in six months. They determined that no existing technologies could stop the space rock, since the time frame was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">too short</a> to launch a mission that could destroy or deflect an asteroid.</p><p>To successfully protect the planet from such a threat, experts estimate, they'd <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">need five to 10 years' warning</a>.</p><p>"What you want to do is find them early, find them as early as possible - as in years, or even decades, before they pose a threat," Paul Chodas, the manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, told Insider. "The dinosaurs didn't have a space program, and look what happened to them. We have a space program. And given enough time, we can do something about this threat. It's one of the few natural threats we actually have the technology to basically mitigate."</p><p>NASA intends to catalogue nearby <keyword id="81841" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Asteroids">asteroids</keyword> over time and chart their paths through the solar system, so that someday - if necessary - humanity could have a shot at destroying or deflecting any space rocks headed for Earth. But to do that, the agency needs a space <keyword id="81842" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Telescope">telescope</keyword> that doesn't exist yet. Called the NEO Surveyor Mission (NEO stands for near-Earth object), it's scheduled to launch into Earth's orbit in 2026.</p><p>At least, that's the tentative timeline. For years, work on this kind of infrared telescope has been caught in "NASA mission limbo hell," according to MIT astronomer Richard Binzel. No proposal has progressed beyond early development, so engineers and scientists haven't started building any such telescope for flight yet, much less preparing for launch.</p><p>"Every day we wait is one day less that we have the information we need to make a response," Binzel, who studies potentially hazardous asteroids, told Insider. "What that means is, for now, we are relying on luck to keep us safe from major asteroid impacts. But luck is not a plan."</p><p>However, NASA conducted a critical review of the NEO Surveyor last month, which should determine whether the mission will finally get funding to move forward. Amy Mainzer, who leads the project, told Insider it "seemed to go well," but NASA has not announced its decision yet. </p><h2>NASA needs to find any asteroids big enough to crush a city</h2><div type="image" title="asteroid earth fly by" height="2139" width="2852" msid="83184795" hostid="261"></div><p>In August, an asteroid the size of a car passed closer to Earth than any known space rock had ever come without crashing. It missed our planet by about 1,830 miles.</p><p>Astronomers didn't know the space rock existed until about six hours <em>after</em> it whizzed by.</p><p>Because of its small size, that asteroid probably wouldn't have posed any danger had it struck - it would have burnt up in the atmosphere. But its surprise visit highlighted a major blind spot: Nobody saw it coming because it was approaching from the direction of the sun. Telescopes on the ground can only observe the sky at night, which means they miss almost everything that flies at us from the sun.</p><p>By scouting from a position in space, the NEO Surveyor would be able to look towards the sun. And since it would use infrared light, it could also spot asteroids that are too dark for Earth-based telescopes.</p><p>But the mission is no guarantee. Plans for this kind of a space telescope have been in the works since 2005, when Congress mandated that NASA find and track 90% of all <keyword id="1821718" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="near-Earth-objects">near-Earth objects</keyword> 140 meters (460 feet) or larger in size. That's big enough to obliterate a city like New York.</p><p>The initial deadline was 2020. According to Chodas, NASA has only spotted about 40% of those objects so far.</p><h2>'Stuck in the same place we have been for at least 5 years'</h2><div type="image" title="asteroid belt vega" height="585" width="1041" msid="83184800" hostid="261"></div><p>NASA turned down a similar asteroid-tracking space telescope mission - called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-detection-mission-neocam-nasa-funding-astronaut-support-2018-11">NEOCam</a> - three times.</p><p>Mainzer first submitted the idea in 2006, but NASA declined to take it on as an official mission. The agency passed again when she submitted another proposal in 2010. NASA did, however, allot some funding to develop technology for the telescope's electronic detectors.</p><p>Then came a reminder from space. In 2013, a house-sized asteroid screamed into the skies above Chelyabinsk, Russia and exploded. The blast sent out a shock wave that broke windows, damaged buildings, and injured more than 1,400 people. No one on Earth saw it coming. That same day, a <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/02/15/172080937/no-link-between-meteor-that-hurt-hundreds-and-asteroid-about-to-fly-by">larger asteroid</a> came within 17,000 miles of the planet.</p><p>Jim Bridenstine, who served as the Trump administration's NASA Administrator, said in 2019 that the agency's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-threat-of-meteor-crashing-into-earth-is-bigger-than-you-think-2019-5">modeling</a> suggests an event like the Chelyabinsk meteor occurs about every 60 years.</p><div type="image" title="asteroid russia Chelyabinsk" height="3744" width="5616" msid="83184806" hostid="261"></div><p>Mainzer proposed the NEOCam mission once more in 2015, to little avail, though NASA did grant the telescope an extra year of funding for further development. NEOCam never became an official NASA mission.</p><p>Then, several years later, another near miss: A 427-foot-wide, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-flies-close-to-earth-surprising-scientists-2019-7">"city-killer" space rock</a> flew within 45,000 miles of Earth in 2019. NASA had almost no warning about it.</p><p>Two months later, the agency announced that it was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-telescope-to-detect-deadly-asteroids-2019-9">officially taking on a new mission called NEO Surveyor</a> - which sounded a lot like NEOCam, just with a different name and some different team members.</p><p>"While NEO Surveyor is based on the previous NEOCam concept, it is more closely focused on planetary defense requirements," a NASA spokesperson told Insider in a statement.</p><p>Binzel called the decision "a huge step forward," though it has yet to move past early development. NEO Surveyor is still in what NASA calls "Phase A" - a stage focusing on design and technology development.</p><p>The team has been designing infrared camera chips and planning how to load the telescope onto a rocket, according to Mainzer.</p><p>"We really just tried to focus on the technical work and making sure that we can do the best job that we can, so that when we do get into Phase B, we can hit the ground running," she said.</p><p>Binzel said a lot of the holdup has to do with NASA's budget.</p><p>"The sticking point is in Congressional appropriations," he said. "NASA has repeatedly and publicly said 'we're ready to do this.' But it never gets appropriated in the budget."</p><p>To move NEO Surveyor forward, Binzel added, NASA's planetary-defense program would need about $225 million per year. Last year it got $150 million.</p><p>"My sense is that asteroid impacts are so unlikely in a two-year Congressional term, they don't get much focus," he said.</p><h2>NASA is deciding whether to move NEO Surveyor forward</h2><div type="image" title="asteroid belt vega" height="585" width="1041" msid="83184800" hostid="261"></div><p>If NASA decides that the NEO Surveyor Mission is ready for Phase B, the team could then start building prototypes and developing hardware and software. </p><p>"The NEO Surveyor project will be notified of the outcome in the coming weeks," the NASA spokesperson said.</p><p>NASA's budget request for 2022 allots <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/fy2022_congressional_justification_nasa_budget_request.pdf">$197 million</a> for planetary defense, including $143 million for NEO Surveyor, but Congress must still approve it. That would be a significant increase in funding from the $28 million the mission received in 2021. NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen <a href="https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/nasas-new-neo-mission-will-substantially-reduce-time-to-find-hazardous-asteroids/">estimated</a> in 2019 that the telescope could cost about $500 to $600 million in total.</p><p>"The budget for planetary defense is able to move NEO Surveyor through Phase B," NASA said.</p><p>Mainzer said that if the project does move ahead to the next phase, the team would be on track for a 2026 launch. Otherwise, the mission could be delayed further. NEO Surveyor was originally set to launch in 2025, but that's already been bumped back.</p><p>"I think this mission is the right thing to do," Mainzer said. "This is not a problem that people should stay awake worrying about at night, but it's something we'd like to cross off our list."</p><p><em>Aylin Woodward contributed reporting.</em></p>

A space telescope that could protect Earth from asteroids has been stuck in 'NASA mission limbo hell' - but it may finally escape

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.insider.com/adam-driver-did-not-go-house-of-gucci-wrap-party-2022-1">Adam Driver</a> asked NASA how it would save Earth from an incoming asteroid.</li><li>No <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-dart-mission-cant-protect-earth-without-surveilling-asteroids-2022-9">city-killer asteroids</a> are known to be <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/planet-killer-asteroid-could-threaten-earth-in-a-few-millennia-2022-10">a threat to Earth</a>, but NASA hasn't catalogued all of them.</li></ul><p><a href="https://www.insider.com/adam-driver-said-son-hates-movies-wont-watch-new-film-2023-3">Adam Driver</a> sat down with NASA to talk about avoiding an asteroid apocalypse.</p><p>The actor is launching a new film, called "65," where he plays a space pilot who crash-lands on Earth at the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago, then discovers the approach of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dinosaur-fossil-from-day-extinction-asteroid-hit-earth-scientists-claim-2022-4">the asteroid which drove dinosaurs' extinction</a>.</p><p>"What if we found out that an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-nasa-dart-impacted-looks-like-comet-hubble-photo-reveals-2022-10">asteroid</a> like this were going to hit our planet today?" Driver asked in a video NASA posted last week.</p><p>Don't worry about such a large asteroid — an extinction-level space rock — <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/comet-heading-earth-bright-outshine-stars-scientists-c-2023-a32023-3">approaching Earth</a> anytime soon, NASA astronomer Kelly Fast was quick to clarify.</p><p>"Those large ones, most of them have been found. They're easier to spot. There are fewer of them," Fast, who manages NASA's near-Earth object observations, said in the video. "But there are asteroids still left to be found that aren't <em>that</em> large, but still are of a size that could do damage should they impact."</p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qj6YsJqO6bA" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>Specifically, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-advances-asteroid-tracking-space-telescope-after-years-of-limbo-2021-6">NASA is on the hunt for asteroids</a> larger than 140 meters (460 feet) wide. Those are big enough to flatten a city. Congress had mandated that NASA identify and track 90% of those city-killers, to ensure their orbits aren't taking them on a collision course with Earth.</p><p>"If an asteroid were discovered that were going to impact Earth, NASA's role would be to inform planning, to give information about the asteroid, about where the impact would happen, about what the effects might be," Fast said.</p><p>The agency also has the ability to intervene and push such an asteroid away from our planet. Three NASA missions are filling the planetary-defense toolbelt.</p><h2>NASA can slam an asteroid with a spacecraft — and it already did</h2><div type="image" title="sequence of images showing asteroid from a distance then close up then video cutting out" height="1000" width="2000" msid="98951923" hostid="261" sizebytes="58056"></div><p>Driver's next question was about <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-crashes-dart-spacecraft-into-asteroid-to-test-planetary-defense-2022-9">NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which slammed a spacecraft into an asteroid</a> called Dimorphos last year, to see if that push could change its orbit around a larger asteroid.</p><p>It was a test of NASA's simplest option for a deadly asteroid: With enough years' notice, a probe could give the space rock enough of a nudge to change its orbit around the sun and take it off its collision course with Earth.</p><div type="image" title="LICIACube image showing the aftermath of the DART impact." height="1080" width="1080" msid="98951925" hostid="261" sizebytes="12896"></div><p>"Would that work? Could that be an effective, uh, means of saving the planet from an asteroid?" Driver asked.</p><p>It worked when DART did it. The spacecraft's impact altered Dimorphos's orbit by 33 minutes, pushing it closer to its parent asteroid.</p><div type="image" title="Infographic showing the effect of DART spacecraft impact on the orbit of asteroid Dimorphos" height="1520" width="2600" msid="98951926" hostid="261" sizebytes="109614"></div><p>Other options that scientists have pitched include shooting the asteroid with lasers, or launching a nuclear bomb at it. NASA hasn't tried either of those approaches.</p><p>"DART showed that we do have technology for diverting an asteroid in space, but there is still a lot left to be done," Fast said.</p><h2>NASA is studying and tracking down near-Earth asteroids</h2><p>Fast added that NASA's approach to any asteroid would depend on the asteroid's size and composition.</p><p>Another NASA mission, called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-osiris-rex-asteroid-spacecraft-stored-pounds-of-rock-2020-10">Osiris-Rex, landed on the surface of an asteroid</a> in 2020 and scooped up its rocky space dust.</p><div type="image" title="osiris rex side by side skitch" height="1500" width="2000" msid="98951927" hostid="261" sizebytes="178566"></div><p>Those samples are set to return to Earth later this year, and they'll help scientists understand the composition of space rocks, and inform future study of any hazardous asteroids that may be discovered.</p><p>The third leg of NASA's asteroid-defense plan is a mission that Driver didn't ask about. It's a space telescope specifically designed for <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-advances-asteroid-tracking-space-telescope-after-years-of-limbo-2021-6">tracking down city-killer asteroids</a>. It's called the Near-Earth Object Surveyor, or NEO Surveyor.</p><p>That mission would help NASA fulfill its Congressional mandate to catalogue those asteroids. That's crucial, because <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">NASA has to discover any incoming asteroid years before it impacts Earth</a>, so the agency has enough time to study it and make a plan.</p><div type="image" title="neocam asteroid hunter spacecraft discovery nasa jpl caltech" height="1476" width="1968" msid="98951928" hostid="261" sizebytes="169106"></div><p>The infrared telescope NEO Surveyor is currently in development, planned for launch in 2026.</p><p>Even though Driver and Fast didn't discuss that mission, the actor seemed impressed with NASA's efforts.</p><p>"Thank you for your work in keeping the planet safe from world-ending asteroids plummeting into our planet," Driver said.</p>

Adam Driver asked NASA how it plans to save Earth from world-ending asteroids

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/listen-bloop-of-meteor-falling-to-mars-nasa-insight-lander-2022-9">NASA</a> is about to slam a spacecraft into an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dinosaur-fossil-from-day-extinction-asteroid-hit-earth-scientists-claim-2022-4">asteroid</a> to nudge it into a new orbit.</li><li>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-launches-dart-probe-into-collision-course-with-asteroid-2021-11">Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)</a> is practice for deflecting an asteroid away from Earth.</li></ul><p>NASA is about to slam a spacecraft into an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astronomer-discover-youngest-asteroid-pair-ever-in-our-solar-system-2022-2">asteroid</a>, obliterating the probe and nudging the space rock.</p><p>The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is aiming for an asteroid called Dimorphos, which is orbiting a giant asteroid called Didymos. By crashing into it, NASA hopes to push the smaller space rock into a new orbit closer to its parent asteroid. The impact, scheduled for Monday, is practice for deflecting dangerous asteroids away from our planet.</p><div type="image" title="Infographic showing the effect of DART spacecraft impact on the orbit of asteroid Dimorphos" height="1520" width="2600" msid="94501281" hostid="261"></div><p>Dimorphos is 163 meters (535 feet) wide — big enough to obliterate a city like New York. That's no cause for concern, since it isn't on an Earth-bound trajectory, and DART won't change its path through the solar system. But that makes it perfect practice for one of the biggest threats in our cosmic neighborhood: city-killer asteroids, clocking in at 140 meters (460 feet) or larger.</p><p>Having a tried-and-true deflection method won't help protect Earth from asteroids if nobody sees them coming, though. Experts previously told Insider that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">NASA would need five to 10 years</a> to build and launch a customized mission to deflect an incoming asteroid. To date, scientists have only identified 40% of city-killer asteroids orbiting near Earth, NASA estimates. Nobody knows where the rest of them are, or where they're going.</p><div type="image" title="asteroid dimorphos edited next to rome Colosseum showing they are the same size" height="2418" width="2000" msid="94501283" hostid="261"></div><p>"Of course, you can't use any mitigation techniques unless you know where the asteroids are," Amy Mainzer, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, told Insider.</p><p>In 2005, Congress mandated that NASA catalogue 90% of those 140-meter-plus asteroids. Mainzer has been working on a space telescope called Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, which is designed to fulfill that goal.</p><p>"This is one of the long list of risks that are out there to life on our planet," Mainzer said. "It's something we should just go cross off our list of worries. And the way we do that, is we go look for the asteroids, in my opinion."</p><p>NEO Surveyor has made slow progress, though, and it just took another big hit.</p><p>At the beginning of 2022, the mission got an infusion of $143.2 million to propel it toward launch. But NASA has since rescinded $33 million of that budget for this year, according to Mainzer, and slashed the project's budget by $100 million for <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/fy23_nasa_budget_request_full_opt.pdf">2023</a>. NASA estimates that will delay the telescope at least two years, so it will launch in 2028 at the earliest.</p><p>"We are obviously disappointed about the budget cuts, because we know that it creates a less efficient project. It's going to make it cost more and take longer," Mainzer said.</p><h2>Smaller asteroids are already sneaking up on us</h2><p>Asteroids have already surprised humans a few times in recent years.</p><div type="image" title="asteroid russia Chelyabinsk" height="3744" width="5616" msid="94501284" hostid="261"></div><p>In 2013, a house-sized asteroid screamed into the skies above Chelyabinsk, Russia, and exploded. The blast sent out a shock wave that broke windows, damaged buildings, and injured more than 1,400 people. No one on Earth saw it coming. That same day, a <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/02/15/172080937/no-link-between-meteor-that-hurt-hundreds-and-asteroid-about-to-fly-by">larger asteroid</a> came within 17,000 miles of the planet.</p><p>Jim Bridenstine, who served as the Trump administration's NASA administrator, said in 2019 that the agency's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-threat-of-meteor-crashing-into-earth-is-bigger-than-you-think-2019-5">modeling</a> suggested an event like the Chelyabinsk meteor occurs about every 60 years.</p><p>But the Chelyabinsk rock was small — about 50 feet wide. In 2019, a 427-foot, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-flies-close-to-earth-surprising-scientists-2019-7">"city-killer" space rock</a> flew within 45,000 miles of Earth, and NASA had almost no warning about that either.</p><div type="image" title="people in winter coats gather around large dark rock wrapped in straps and rope" height="1665" width="2220" msid="94501285" hostid="261"></div><p>Then in 2020, an asteroid the size of a car passed closer to Earth than any known space rock had ever come without crashing. It missed our planet by about 1,830 miles. Astronomers didn't know the asteroid existed until about six hours after it whizzed by. Nobody saw it coming, because it was approaching from the direction of the sun.</p><p>Telescopes on the ground can only observe the sky at night, which means they miss almost everything that flies at us from the sun. NEO Surveyor, from its perch in Earth's orbit, would be able to spot such space rocks. Since it would use infrared light, it could also spot asteroids that are too dark for Earth-based telescopes.</p><h2>The asteroid-spying telescope is suffering further delays</h2><div type="image" title="neocam asteroid hunter spacecraft discovery nasa jpl caltech" height="1476" width="1968" msid="94501286" hostid="261"></div><p>Mainzer first submitted the idea for an asteroid-hunting space telescope in 2006. NASA declined to take it on as a mission, funding other projects instead. She submitted proposals in 2010 and 2015 as well, but the agency kept passing.</p><p>NEO Surveyor finally <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-telescope-to-detect-deadly-asteroids-2019-9">became an official NASA mission</a> in 2019. Then the project languished in what NASA calls "Phase A" — a stage focusing on design and technology development. Last year, NEO Surveyor passed a key review and moved into Phase B, allowing Mainzer and her team to start building prototypes and developing hardware and software.</p><p>Then Congress and President Joe Biden approved a budget of $143.2 million for the telescope in 2022 (later chopped to $110 million). That's a significant increase from the $28 million the mission received in 2021, and it allowed the team to make "significant" progress in all elements of the telescope's design, Mainzer said. But the agency's 2023 budget proposal allots just $40 million to the project. </p><p>Once in orbit, NEO Surveyor is expected to spend 10 years boosting NASA's catalogue from 40% of city-killing asteroids up to 90%. After that, researchers can move on to smaller classes of asteroid, like the one that shocked Chelyabinsk.</p><p>"If you do a good thorough search, you might find that there are no potentially hazardous objects on the impact trajectory. And that would be great," Mainzer said. "It's reasonably straightforward to go find out the answer, so we should go do that."</p><p>If the DART impact goes according to plan on Monday, NASA will be better equipped to divert any Earth-bound asteroid NEO Surveyor might discover.</p><p><em>September 23, 2022: This story has been updated to reflect the budget cut for NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveyor project.</em></p>

The asteroid NASA is about to strike poses no threat to Earth, but 60% of city-killer rocks fly under the radar

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astronomer-discover-youngest-asteroid-pair-ever-in-our-solar-system-2022-2">Astronomers</a> discovered a "planet killer" asteroid that may pose a threat to Earth in future millennia.</li><li>The discovery highlights a dangerous blind spot: it's hard to see <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/comet-neowise-surprise-appearance-earth-unprepared-for-asteroids-2020-7">anything coming from the direction of the sun</a>.</li></ul><p>Astronomers discovered a large <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-confirms-dart-probe-crash-moved-asteroid-2022-10">asteroid</a> nearby this year, on a trajectory that could take it dangerously close to our planet in the distant future.</p><p>The asteroid, called 2022 AP7, is about 1.5 kilometers wide — nearly one mile. That makes it a "planet killer," Scott S. Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science, said in a <a href="https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2226/">press release</a> announcing the discovery on Monday.</p><p>Although the rock isn't as big as the one that led to dinosaurs' extinction, it's big enough to wreak planet-wide destruction and potentially change life on Earth as we know it.</p><p>Thankfully, 2022 AP7 isn't headed for Earth anytime soon, especially not in the next century, according to researchers' calculations. </p><p>"Way down the line, in the next few thousand years, it could turn into a problem for our descendants," Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queen's University Belfast who was not involved in the study, told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/science/asteroid-planet-killer.html">The New York Times</a>.</p><p>But there could be other planet killer asteroids lurking unseen in the blind spot where 2022 AP7 was discovered: within the orbits of Earth and Venus, between us and the sun.</p><h2>The sun's glare could conceal dangerous asteroids</h2><div type="image" title="illustration of asteroid shadow with sun shining behind" height="720" width="1280" msid="95237774" hostid="261" sizebytes="31102"></div><p>In August 2020, an asteroid the size of a car passed closer to Earth than any known space rock had ever come without crashing. It missed our planet by about 1,830 miles.</p><p>Astronomers didn't know the space rock existed until about six hours <em>after</em> it whizzed by. Nobody saw it coming, because it was approaching from the direction of the sun.</p><p>Telescopes spot asteroids by detecting sunlight reflecting off of them. That makes it very difficult to spot asteroids located between Earth and the sun. The brilliant glare of our star — which is 109 times wider than Earth — easily drowns out the faint glint of a mile-wide asteroid. Plus, some asteroids aren't very reflective.</p><p>To find more asteroids in this blinding zone, Sheppard's team used a camera designed to detect dark energy, mounted on a telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.</p><p>They could only scan the near-sun sky during a 10-minute window at twilight, peering at the horizon just before the sun emerges. Sheppard's team was able to identify three previously unknown near-Earth asteroids, including 2022 AP7. The survey results were <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ac8cff">published</a> in The Astronomical Journal on September 29.</p><p>"There are likely only a few [near-Earth asteroids] with similar sizes left to find," Sheppard said in the release.</p><p>He added that most of the undiscovered asteroids probably stay closer to the sun, rather than coming near Earth's orbit.</p><h2>NASA is making Armageddon plans</h2><div type="image" title="sequence of images showing asteroid from a distance then close up then video cutting out" height="1000" width="2000" msid="95237775" hostid="261" sizebytes="58056"></div><p>NASA is working on a game plan for the day scientists detect an asteroid on a true collision course with Earth. The agency just slammed a spacecraft into a distant asteroid and successfully changed that asteroid's orbit around a larger space rock.</p><p>That mission, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), was practice for striking any asteroid approaching Earth, giving it a nudge to steer it off course. No such asteroids have been identified, but NASA is preparing for the possibility of future discoveries.</p><p>However, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">scientists previously told Insider</a> that NASA would probably need about five to 10 years to build and launch a DART-like deflection mission for an asteroid that posed a threat to Earth. That means astronomers must identify asteroids long before they approach our planet.</p><p>NASA is slowly advancing a space telescope to track down more city killer asteroids in our cosmic neighborhood. That project, called the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-dart-mission-cant-protect-earth-without-surveilling-asteroids-2022-9">recently had its budget cut by more than $100 million</a>. It's set to launch as early as 2028.</p><div type="image" title="neocam asteroid hunter spacecraft discovery nasa jpl caltech" height="1712" width="1968" msid="95237776" hostid="261" sizebytes="205312"></div><p>The telescope is designed to help NASA fulfill a Congressional mandate to find and track 90% of all near-Earth objects 140 meters (460 feet) or larger in size. That's big enough to obliterate a city like New York. The goal was to find them by the end of 2020. Obviously, NASA is behind.</p><p>So far, NASA estimates it has only catalogued 40% of those city killers. NEO Surveyor would help spot the rest of them. That includes asteroids coming from the direction of the sun.</p>

'Planet killer' asteroid hidden by the sun may threaten Earth in a few thousand years

A potentially hazardous giant asteroid is set to zoom past <keyword id="6359982" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="earth" source="Orion">Earth</keyword> with a 37,400 km/h speed on Thursday, according to <keyword id="6360409" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword>.<br /><br />The asteroid, named 418135 (2008 AG33), has an estimated diameter between 350 to 780 metres, revealed NASA's <keyword id="13734975" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="centre-for-near-earth-object-studies" source="Orion">Centre for Near Earth Object Studies</keyword> (CNEOS).<br /><br />NASA defines any space object that comes within 193 million km of Earth as a "near-Earth object" (NEO) and any fast-moving object within 7.5 million km as "potentially hazardous".<br /><br />According to the Centre, as they orbit the <keyword id="24879" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="sun" source="Orion">Sun</keyword>, the NEOs can occasionally approach close to Earth. However, it explained that a "close" passage astronomically can be very far away in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometres.<br /><br />Asteroid 418135 is thus expected to skim past our planet without any risk of impact, <keyword id="1274891" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="live-science" source="Orion">Live Science</keyword> reported.<br /><br />At its closest point, the asteroid, travelling at more than 30 times the speed of sound, will come within about 3.2 million kilometres of Earth, which is roughly eight times the average distance between Earth and the Moon.<br /><br />Asteroid 418135 was first discovered on January 12, 2008, by asteroid surveyors at the Mt. <keyword id="13734974" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="lemmon-skycenter" source="Orion">Lemmon SkyCenter</keyword> observatory in Arizona and last zipped past Earth on March 1, 2015, according to CNEOS.<br /><br />The asteroid swings by our planet roughly every seven years, with the next close flyby predicted to come on May 25, 2029.<br /><br />But it may not be the biggest space rock to hurtle past Earth. Another asteroid, named 467460 (2006 JF42) is touted to be the biggest so far to zoom past Earth, the report said.<br /><br />The space rock has an estimated diameter between 380 to 860 metres and will be travelling at roughly 40,700 km/h when it passes Earth on May 9.<br /><br />Several space agencies are already working on ways to possibly deflect asteroids flying straight at Earth.<br /><br />Last November, NASA launched a spacecraft as a part of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission, which plans to redirect a non-hazardous asteroid by ramming it off course.<br /><br />China is also in the early planning stages of an asteroid-redirect mission. By slamming 23 Long March 5 rockets into the asteroid Bennu, the country says it would be able to divert the space rock from a potentially catastrophic impact with Earth, the report said.<br /><br />SEE ALSO:<br /><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/ola-may-be-rushing-into-electric-cars-when-scooters-continue-to-underperform/articleshow/91141264.cms"></a><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/google-will-now-allow-users-to-remove-personal-information-from-their-search-results/articleshow/91142502.cms">Google will now allow users to remove personal information from their Search results</a><br /><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/adani-enterprises-sets-up-a-wholly-owned-media-arm/articleshow/91128727.cms"></a><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/skywatching-on-april-30-venus-and-jupiter-will-look-like-they-are-about-to-collide/articleshow/91145254.cms">Skywatching on April 30: Venus and Jupiter will look like they are about to collide</a><br />

Potentially hazardous giant asteroid to skim past Earth on Thursday: NASA

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-simulated-asteroid-couldnt-stop-impact-europe-2021-5">NASA simulated</a> a scenario in which an asteroid was approaching Earth and would hit in six months.</li><li>The experts determined that wasn't enough time to stop it. We'd need at least five years to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/comet-neowise-surprise-appearance-earth-unprepared-for-asteroids-2020-7">deflect an asteroid</a>.</li><li>To have that much warning time, <keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword> needs a new <keyword id="41531" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="space">space</keyword> telescope that can spot <keyword id="81841" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Asteroids">asteroids</keyword>.</li></ul><p>Last month, experts from NASA and other space agencies around the world faced a troubling hypothetical scenario: A mysterious asteroid had just been discovered 35 million miles away, and it was heading for Earth. The space rock was expected to hit in six months.</p><p>The situation was fictional, part of a week-long exercise that simulated an incoming asteroid in order to help US and international experts practice how to respond to such a situation.</p><p>The <keyword id="67741" type="TECHNOLOGY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Simulation">simulation</keyword> taught the group a difficult lesson: If an Earth-bound asteroid were spotted with that little warning, there's nothing anyone could do to keep it from hitting the planet. The experts determined that no existing technologies could stop the asteroid from striking, given the scenario's six-month window. There isn't a spacecraft capable of destroying an asteroid or pushing it off its path that could get off the ground and fly to the rock in that amount of time. </p><p>Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, helped host the recent simulation, as well as five previous ones like it. He said this exercise set the participants up for failure.</p><p>"It's what we call a short-warning scenario," he told Insider. "It was, by design, very challenging."</p><p>In reality, if an asteroid like that fictional one were heading for Earth, scientists would need years - not months - of warning. Five years is the minimum, according to Chodas. Others, like MIT astronomer Richard Binzel, say we'd need at least a decade.</p><p>"Time is the most valuable commodity you could possibly wish for, if faced with a real asteroid threat," Binzel told Insider.</p><p>But scientists haven't identified most of the hazardous space rocks that pass near our planet, which makes the chances slim that we'd get a five- or 10-year warning period. In 2005, Congress attempted to address this issue by mandating that NASA find and track 90% of all <keyword id="1821718" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="near-Earth-objects">near-Earth objects</keyword> 140 meters (460 feet) or larger. At that size, asteroids could obliterate a city the size of New York. But to date, NASA has only spotted about 40% of those objects.</p><p>"What that means is, for now, we are relying on luck to keep us safe from major <keyword id="2929843" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="asteroid-impacts">asteroid impacts</keyword>," Binzel said. "But luck is not a plan."</p><h2>To defend a planet, 'know thy enemy'</h2><div type="image" title="asteroid russia Chelyabinsk" height="3744" width="5616" msid="82574875" hostid="261"></div><p>In NASA's recent simulation, the participating scientists didn't know how big the hypothetical asteroid was <a href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc21/pdc21_factsheet4.pdf">until a week before</a> it was set to hit Earth.</p><p>"We didn't know if the object was 35 meters across or 500 meters across. And that makes a very big difference," Sarah Sonnett, a researcher at the Planetary <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword> Institute who participated in the exercise, told Insider.</p><p>A 35-meter asteroid could explode in the atmosphere and send shockwaves through a neighborhood. A 500-meter asteroid could decimate a city, affecting an area the size of France.</p><p>So a crucial part of stopping an asteroid from hitting Earth is understanding as much as possible about the rock. That includes its size, the path it takes around the sun, and what it's made of. With that information, scientists can evaluate strategies to dismantle the rock or disrupt its path.</p><p>"It takes time to know thy enemy," Binzel said.</p><p>Ideally, Sonnett said, scientists would be able to study a hazardous asteroid as it passed Earth a few times in its orbit around the sun, before that path brought it close enough to collide with our planet. Observing a passing asteroid several times could take years or even decades.</p><h2>Step 2: Destroy or deflect the asteroid</h2><div type="image" title="asteroid broken up" height="2250" width="3000" msid="82574878" hostid="261"></div><p>NASA has three main tools in its planetary-defense arsenal. The first is to detonate an explosive device near an oncoming asteroid to break it up into smaller, less dangerous chunks. The second is to fire lasers that could heat up and vaporize the space rock enough to change its orbital path. The third is to send a spacecraft to slam into the asteroid, knocking it off its trajectory.</p><p>NASA is about to test that last strategy. Its Double Asteroid Redirection Test will send a probe to the asteroid Dimorphos in the fall of 2022 and purposefully hit it.</p><p>But any of the three options, Chodas said, would take years.</p><p>"Typically, that's a drawn-out, multi-year process to go from proposal to actually having a spacecraft on a launch vehicle - let alone the fact that you still have to cruise to get to your destination and deflect the asteroid," he said. </p><p>After that, it would take one or two years for the asteroid's path around the sun to actually change enough to carry it away from Earth. That's why the timeline matters: The earlier scientists can identify a hazardous space rock, the less ambitious a deflection mission would have to be.</p><div type="image" title="DART nasa asteroid mission spacecraft" height="1406" width="2500" msid="82574881" hostid="261"></div><p>But of course, all of these methods are useless if nobody knows the asteroid is coming.</p><p>"I think the best investment is in knowledge. The best investment is knowing what's out there," Binzel said.</p><p>That means completing a catalogue of near-Earth objects that could damage the Earth.</p><h2>NASA is developing a space telescope to track asteroids</h2><div type="image" title="NEO CAM NEO Surveyor NASA" height="600" width="750" msid="82574883" hostid="261"></div><p>NASA is planning a mission to track down asteroids that are too dim for telescopes on Earth to see. The NEO Surveyor Mission, as it's known (NEO stands for near-Earth object), would launch an infrared telescope into Earth's orbit <a href="https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2021/pdf/2705.pdf">in 2026</a>. Sonnet is on that mission team.</p><p>"If we do the job now of finding those objects and tracking them, knowing their orbits, knowing where they're going to head, and then characterizing their sizes, then we should be in really good shape," she said.</p><p>If the telescope launches and works as planned, it should fulfill NASA's Congressional mandate to find 90% of the most dangerous near-Earth objects.</p><p>But for five years, the NEO Surveyor has been caught in "NASA mission limbo hell," as Binzel put it. Due to insufficient funding, it hasn't moved past the early development phase.</p><p>Sonnett has her fingers crossed that the NEO Surveyor Mission will do well in an upcoming review. At the end of this month, NASA will assess whether the mission is ready to move into the next phase. If so, the team could start building prototypes and developing hardware and software. If not, the telescope's launch could be delayed even further.</p><p>"Because we now have the capability to detect and know what is out there, I think scientifically we have a moral responsibility to obtain that information," Binzel said. "It would be unconscionable that we were caught by surprise, by an asteroid impact that we could have seen coming."</p>

We'd need 5 to 10 years' notice to stop a killer asteroid heading for Earth

<ul class="summary-list"><li>On Saturday, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-advances-asteroid-tracking-space-telescope-after-years-of-limbo-2021-6">NASA</a> plans to launch its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/osiris-rex-spacecraft-asteroids-trojan-2016-12">Lucy</a> probe to the Trojan <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-hit-ancient-middle-eastern-city-inspired-sodom-bible-story-2021-9">asteroids</a> that orbit the sun with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/5-years-of-stunning-jupiter-photos-nasa-juno-mission-2021-9">Jupiter</a>. </li><li>The Trojans are like <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fossil-footprints-humans-occupied-north-america-ice-age-2021-9">fossils</a>, unchanged since the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-animation-reveals-planets-wildly-different-speeds-2021-8">solar system</a> was born 4.6 billion years ago.</li><li><keyword id="12264053" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="lucy" source="Orion">Lucy</keyword> aims to visit eight <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">asteroids</a> - a record number of encounters.</li></ul><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hubble-space-telescope-wind-changes-jupiter-great-red-spot-2021-9">NASA</a> is about to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-launching-film-crew-to-space-station-2021-9">launch</a> an ambitious mission to explore swarms of <keyword id="12253294" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="asteroids" source="Orion">asteroids</keyword> as old as our <keyword id="11910185" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="solar-system" source="Orion">solar system</keyword>.</p><p>Those asteroids, called Trojans, orbit the sun alongside <keyword id="11949137" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="jupiter" source="Orion">Jupiter</keyword>. One group of them leads the gas giant along its orbital path, and another group trails behind. These space rocks formed during the birth of our solar system nearly 4.6 billion years ago and have remained largely unchanged ever since.</p><div type="image" title="atlas v rocket lifting off" height="1920" width="1279" msid="87050188" hostid="261"></div><p>Scientists want to find out what those time capsules hold, so <keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword> is sending a 52-foot-wide spacecraft, called Lucy, to investigate. The probe is set to launch aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Saturday morning.</p><p>Lucy is scheduled to visit eight asteroids over the next 12 years. One of those space rocks is in the solar system's main asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter, which Lucy will pass on its way to the other seven asteroids, which are part of the Trojans.</p><p>"These objects we view as being the fossils of planet formation," Hal Levison, the mission's principal investigator, said in a briefing last month.</p><div type="image" title="animated diagram of trojan asteroid leading following jupiter on orbit around the sun" height="500" width="500" msid="86839250" hostid="261"></div><p>That's where Lucy gets its name - it's a reference to the famous 3.2-million-year-old fossilized human ancestor. At the time of her discovery, in 1974, Lucy was the oldest, most complete hominin skeleton ever found. She was evidence that human ancestors walked upright, which helped paleoanthropologists piece together humans' evolutionary history. Scientists hope that <keyword id="12264054" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="trojan-asteroids" source="Orion">Trojan asteroids</keyword> can do the same for the outer solar system.</p><p>"Some of the most important planetary <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">science</keyword> questions we're trying to answer are focused on the origin and the evolution of the solar system. Asteroids and other small bodies are really important keys to understanding that history," Lori Glaze, NASA's director of planetary science, said in the briefing.</p><div type="image" title="lucy spacecraft folded up with rocket shell closing around it" height="2136" width="1700" msid="86839251" hostid="261"></div><p>Lucy's planned journey would lead it to visit more asteroids than any prior spacecraft. It will also venture further from the sun than any solar-powered probe has ever gone.</p><h2>Watch live as Lucy launches into space</h2><p>Liftoff is scheduled for 5:34 a.m. ET on Saturday. NASA plans to start its live launch broadcast at 5 a.m. in the video embedded below.</p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/21X5lGlDOfg" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>If weather delays the launch, NASA has another 22 days in its window, with an hour-long launch opportunity each morning.</p><h2>Close encounters of the asteroid kind</h2><div type="image" title="trojan asteroids illustration rocks in space leading and following jupiter" height="1440" width="1920" msid="86839252" hostid="261"></div><p>Lucy's mission is seven years in the making. The original plan called for visits to just two asteroids, but NASA grew more ambitious as engineers and scientists designed the spacecraft and plotted its journey.</p><p>Now, the probe has a record-breaking lineup. Some of its eight stops are two-for-ones: One asteroid has its own satellite - a smaller rock trapped in its orbit - and two of Lucy's targets are a pair of binary asteroids that circle each other.</p><p>But Lucy's encounter with each space rock will be brief. The spacecraft can't slow down or land - that would require too much propellant - so it will zip within 600 miles of their surfaces, moving 3 to five 5 miles per second.</p><p>During the few hours in which it approaches and passes the asteroids, Lucy's scientific instruments will collect data on their composition, density, and size. It could even discover rocks or rings circling the asteroids - features too small to see from Earth.</p><p>By the end of Lucy's journey, NASA expects to have spent $981.1 million on the mission, according to Glaze.</p><h2>Lucy has to revisit Earth 3 times to hit its targets</h2><div type="image" title="lucy spacecraft trajectory diagram" height="2813" width="3750" msid="86839253" hostid="261"></div><p>Scientists have identified over 7,000 Trojan asteroids, split into three major types. One group resembles the space rocks in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, while the other two resemble icy objects in the Kuiper Belt on the outskirts of the solar system.</p><p>This suggests that the various types of Trojans formed through different processes, and in different parts of the solar system. Scientists aren't sure how they ended up together along Jupiter's orbit. So Lucy will visit asteroids of each type in an attempt to find out.</p><p>"Covering this diversity is key. And finding a trajectory that actually will allow us to visit all these types of objects has been a real chore," Levison said.</p><p>To reach all of its destinations, in fact, Lucy has to circle back to Earth three times to get a momentum boost from our planet's gravity. That will make it the first spacecraft to travel to Jupiter's orbit and back.</p><h2>NASA is going all in on asteroids</h2><div type="image" title="DART nasa mission approaching asteroid image edited for thumbnail" height="1406" width="2500" msid="86839254" hostid="261"></div><p>NASA is sending probes to asteroids scattered all over the solar system.</p><p>"Lucy is part of a collection of ambitious missions to study the diversity of these asteroid populations that will help us fill in more pieces of that cosmic puzzle," Glaze said.</p><p>NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has been studying asteroids and other objects in the Kuiper Belt, beyond Neptune, since it flew past Pluto in 2015.</p><p>The agency's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-bennu-is-hollow-spinning-to-death-2020-11">OSIRIS-REx</a> spacecraft, meanwhile, landed on an asteroid last year, punched into its surface, and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-osiris-rex-asteroid-spacecraft-stored-pounds-of-rock-2020-10">scooped a sample of rock</a>. That probe is on its way back to Earth with the sample in tow. Japan recently completed a similar mission and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-japan-asteroid-sample-treasure-box-returns-2020-12">brought its own asteroid samples to Earth</a>, so NASA and Japan's space agency plan to trade bits of their samples.</p><div type="image" title="osiris rex landing crush rock" height="1024" width="1024" msid="86839255" hostid="261"></div><p>Other missions aim to prepare for the possibility that an asteroid could <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dinosaurs-going-extinct-before-asteroid-hit-earth-study-2021-6">strike our planet</a>. Next month, NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to slam into a nearby asteroid. That mission, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), is testing a method that could deflect space rocks off of a collision course with Earth. NASA is also <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-advances-asteroid-tracking-space-telescope-after-years-of-limbo-2021-6">working on a new space telescope, called NEO (near-Earth object) Surveyor,</a> which would help scientists catalogue dangerous asteroids in our neighborhood.</p><p>Next year, NASA plans to launch yet another probe, called Psyche, to a metallic asteroid that could be the leftover core of an ancient planet.</p><p>"All of these are incredibly interesting destinations. And in each case, we're exploring places no spacecraft has ever been, so we won't know for sure what we'll discover till we get there," Glaze said. "But we know that whatever Lucy finds will give us vital clues about the formation of our solar system."</p><p><em>This post has been updated. It was originally published on October 7, 2021.</em></p>

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