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NASA’s Latest Project To Save The Planet Illustrates The Urgency Of Space Exploration

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mystery-ak:
 NASA’s Latest Project To Save The Planet Illustrates The Urgency Of Space Exploration
June 15, 2021 By Tristan Justice

The human race is still years away from landing the first people on Mars, and remains decades, if not centuries, from becoming a true interplanetary species with permanent, habitable colonies beyond Earth. In other words, the human race is stuck on a planet vulnerable to the extraterrestrial threats that have reinvented life before, as recent as 66 millions years ago, when the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid collision off what is now present-day Mexico.

Fast-forward to the present day, where 66 million years is a snapshot in geologic time. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has approved development of a new telescope to detect such threats and thwart the repeated fate of the dinosaurs.

On Friday, NASA gave the green light for the Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope, or NEO surveyor, to scan the cosmos for asteroids and comets with the potential to hit Earth by coming within 30 million miles of our planet. The new telescope will use infrared light to pick up dangerous objects flying through the solar system that are unable to be seen by telescopes on Earth with the same goals.

“NEO Surveyor will have the capability to rapidly accelerate the rate at which NASA is able to discover asteroids and comets that could pose a hazard to the Earth, and it is being designed to discover 90 percent of asteroids 140 meters (459 feet) in size or larger within a decade of being launched,” said NASA’s NEO Surveyor program scientist in a statement.


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https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1403429197515673603

more
https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/15/nasas-latest-project-to-save-the-planet-illustrates-the-urgency-of-space-exploration/

thackney:
NEO surveyor bkmk

Sled Dog:
I understand the difficulties, but finding the impactor is only half the battle.

The easy half.

NASA needs to develop the technology to MOVE the impactor out of the way.   Unless it would rather try to move the earth out of the way, instead.

And why don't I ever get a chance to build these cool things?   Ok, they're less cool than what I'm working on now, but always gotta work on lining up the next project, right?

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