Stanford
professor oversees development of asteroid early-detection system
The
Sentinel Space Telescope will map the approximately half million large
asteroids that populate the inner solar system. The observations could be used
to identify threats decades in advance of an impending collision.
A large
asteroid colliding with Earth may seem like a science fiction scenario, but
there's reason to take it seriously. Hundreds of thousands of these bodies
cross Earth's orbit – and the consequences of a direct hit by even one could be
devastating.
But a new
telescope, whose development is being overseen by Stanford Professor Scott
Hubbard, promises to provide an early-detection system that could predict a
devastating impact.
"We
should be able to establish orbits well enough that we can predict where the
asteroids will be in 50 to 100 years," said Hubbard, an aeronautics and
astronautics professor.
The mission
to launch the telescope was announced Thursday in San Francisco at the
California Academy of Sciences by the nonprofit foundation funding it. It was
hailed as the first privately funded deep space mission.
With NASA
support, the B612 Foundation will send the infrared telescope, called Sentinel,
into orbit around the sun, where it will map the swarms of large asteroids that
populate the inner solar system. The telescope is expected to be ready for
launch on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in five to six years.
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