PASADENA, Calif. — After NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth on Tuesday, the space agency is gearing up for another project: a spacecraft targeting asteroids.
A NewsNation exclusive reveals NASA’s high-tech plan to save Earth if an asteroid ever comes barreling toward the planet. The NEO Surveyor, set to launch in 2027, is the first spacecraft specifically designed to hunt large asteroids and comets that could harm Earth.
NewsNation got a look at the NEO Surveyor, which is being built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
After its launch, the NEO Surveyor will be able to spot about 90 percent of asteroids and comets that might pose a hazard to Earth within a range of about 30 million miles. Those that are smaller than about 500 feet in diameter are nearly impossible to see from Earth but not from space.
The NEO Surveyor’s infrared technology will also be capable of measuring the size and composition of these fast-moving objects.
“We’re looking for near-Earth objects — those are the objects that are within the same sort of orbit as the Earth. And the reason we want to look for those is some of those have the potential to impact the Earth,” NASA NEO Surveyor project manager Tom Hoffman told NewsNation.
“So, with this particular project, we’ll be looking for those in this very special spectrum called infrared, trying to detect them and find them before they find us,” he added.
The Surveyor’s announcement comes as scientists have almost fully ruled out any threat from the asteroid 2024 YR4. At one point, the odds of a strike in 2032 were as high as about 3 percent and topped the world’s asteroid-risk lists.
ESA has since lowered the odds to 0.001 percent. NASA has it down to 0.0017 percent — meaning the asteroid will safely pass Earth in 2032 and there’s no threat of impact for the next century.
NASA has already proved it is capable of redirecting an asteroid, should one pose a serious threat to Earth.
