Astronomers spot 'potentially hazardous' asteroid just ONE month before it is due to pass close to Earth
By Daily Mail Reporter
28th September 2010
Astronomers have spotted a 'potentially hazardous' asteroid less than one month before it is due to pass close to Earth.
The object, given the name '2010 ST3', is 150 metres in diameter and will pass within four million miles of Earth in mid-October.
It was discovered using the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) PS1 telescope in images taken on September 16th, when it was about 20 million miles away.
It is the first 'potentially hazardous object' (PHO) to be discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey, using a new telescope designed to scan the skies for dangerous asteroids.
'Although this particular object won't hit Earth in the immediate future, its discovery shows that Pan-STARRS is now the most sensitive system dedicated to discovering potentially dangerous asteroids,' said Robert Jedicke, a University of Hawaii member of the PS1 Scientific Consortium, who is working on the asteroid data from the telescope.
'This object was discovered when it was too far away to be detected by other asteroid surveys,' Jedicke noted.
Most of the largest PHOs have already been catalogued, but scientists suspect that there are many more under a mile across that have not yet been discovered.
These could cause devastation on a regional scale if they ever hit our planet. Such impacts are estimated to occur once every few thousand years.
Timothy Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center (MPC), said, 'I congratulate the Pan-STARRS project on this discovery.
'It is proof that the PS1 telescope, with its Gigapixel Camera and its sophisticated computerized system for detecting moving objects, is capable of finding potentially dangerous objects that no one else has found.'
Pan-STARRS expects to discover tens of thousands of new asteroids every year with sufficient precision to accurately calculate their orbits around the sun.
Any sizable object that looks like it may come close to Earth within the next 50 years or so will be labeled 'potentially hazardous' and carefully monitored.
NASA experts believe that, given several years warning, it should be possible to organize a space mission to deflect any asteroid that is discovered to be on a collision course with Earth.
PS1 and its bigger brother, PS4, which will be operational later in this decade, are expected to discover a million or more asteroids in total.
They will also spot more distant targets such as variable stars, supernovas, and mysterious bursts from galaxies across more than half the universe. PS1 became fully operational in June 201.
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