Arizona professor will lead NASA project to locate menacing objects near Earth tucsonweekly.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from tucsonweekly.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By Jalpan Nanavati
PHOENIX – NASA has appointed a University of Arizona professor to lead a project to track asteroids that potentially could crash into Earth. The mission involves launching a telescope into a high orbit to locate such near-Earth objects using the infrared radiation they emit.
Amy Mainzer, a professor of planetary sciences, will lead a team building the Near Earth Object Surveyor, an infrared telescope that will track and characterize any asteroids that one day could crash into the planet.
“We want to spot them when they are years to ideally decades away from any potential impact with the Earth,” Mainzer said.
28 April 2021
Fragment of asteroid 2018 LA recovered in Central Kalahari Game Reserve in central Botswana.
(Image credit: SETI institute)
A small asteroid barreled through the sky and burned up over the Kalahari Desert of Botswana in the summer of 2018 and now, scientists suspect that the space rock originated from Vesta, the second largest asteroid in the
The small
asteroid, named 2018 LA, was first observed through a telescope at the University of Arizona s Catalina Sky Survey and looked like a speck of light whizzing through the stars, This is only the second time we have spotted an asteroid in space before it hit
UArizona Lead Mission to Discover Dangerous Asteroids irishtechnews.ie - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from irishtechnews.ie Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
NASA has tasked Amy Mainzer, an expert in infrared astronomy at the University of Arizona, with delivering NEO Surveyor, a mission to find, track and characterize yet unseen asteroids and comets that may pose a threat to Earth.