Everything I know about asteroids, regrettably, comes from the 1998 action film Armageddon.
For those of you who don’t have cable and are not endlessly subjected to showings of the film or who possess the will power to change the channel, a recap: A ragtag group of drilling misfits led by Bruce Willis is sent into space to drill a hole and drop a nuclear bomb into an approaching asteroid that threatens to collide with Earth, subsequently detonating it before impact.
Sounds plausible, no?
Well, recent news from NASA suggests that this riveting storyline could become completely implausible if it makes good on its promise of delivering an infrared space telescope called Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam), which can locate asteroids that demonstrate the potential for colliding with Earth.
“I don’t lose sleep over the risk of an undiscovered asteroid impacting the Earth because the chances are small, but they are not zero,” said MIT planetary scientist Richard Binzel, who is not part of the NEOCam team. “We have the capability, the adult responsibility, to simply know what’s out there. And NEOCam is basically ready to go.”
The camera has been in the works since 2005 when Congress passed a law requiring NASA to locate 90% of near-Earth objects greater than 460 ft in diameter. The deadline for completing the camera is fast approaching (2020) and its developers hope it will be completed in time to hop aboard the IMAP space probe, which is expected to launch in 2024. Considering that NEOCam offers asteroid size estimates based on infrared observations, the system could potentially offer early notification of an asteroid on course to destroy the Earth, thereby saving humanity.
Just like Bruce Willis did.
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