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<ul><li><keyword id="9531572" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="comet-neowise">Comet Neowise</keyword> will the first comet to burn bright over Earth’s skies after <keyword id="9066921" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="comet-atlas">Comet Atlas</keyword> and Swan fizzled out earlier this year. <br /></li><li>It will be visible over India for the next 20 days getting brighter each evening.<br /></li><li>Scientists at the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) are already watching the comet and observe that it has a rare sodium tail than burns the same colour as street lamps.<br /></li></ul>Comet Neowise will be visible in India’s skies for the next 20 days as it approaches the Sun for the first time in 4,500 years. It’s the third comet that astronomers were hoping would grace Earth’s skies, and the first one to live up to its promise. <br /><br />"From July 14, C/2020 F3, a comet discovered on March 27, will be clearly visible in the north-western sky. It will be visible after sunset for around 20 minutes for the next 20 days. People can observe it from naked eyes," Subhendu Pattnaik, deputy director of Pathani Samanta Planetarium in Bhubaneswar told the <a href="https://www.orissapost.com/comet-neowise-to-be-visible-in-odisha-skies-from-july-14/">OrissaPOST</a>.<br /><br />The previous two comets, Atlas and Swan, fizzled out before they could become bright enough to be seen by the naked eye. Atlas crumbed to pieces before reaching Earth and Swan was made up of gas, resulting in a much dimmer view than expected.<br /><br />Comet Neowise, on the other hand, will be burning in a blaze of glory in the skies above India — getting brighter each day — before it disappears for another 6,800 years.<br /><br /><strong>They’ve already caught its tail<br /></strong>Scientists at the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) are already watching the comet with a hawk-eye. According to them, Neowise has a sodium tail — something that’s only been observed in very bright comets, such as Hale-Bopp and the sungrazer ISON<br /><br /><div type="image" title="fp_Neowise_Carl" msid="76953333" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Left: light reflected off of cometary dust, which generally follows the appearance to the naked eye. Right: light emitted by sodium atoms.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br />Unlike the <keyword id="9571123" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="comet-tail">comet tail</keyword> that we see down on Earth, Neowise’s sodium tail is narrower, longer and points directly away from the Sun making it very difficult to catch on camera.<br /><br />"Atomic sodium responds to sunlight in a similar way to cometary dust, but its momentum kick comes from a very particular wavelength of yellow light – the same colour seen in sodium vapour street lamps," said Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist <a href="https://psi.edu/news/neowisesodiumtail">Jeffrey Morgenthaler</a>.<br /><br />Comets are essentially icy dirtballs. Their tails are made up of dust, gas and plasma — ionised gas. As they approach the sun, the heat from the sunlight causes the ice to turn into gas. As the gas escapes, it drags ‘material’ — what we Earthlings refer to as dust — with it. <br /><br />As sunlight reflects off the dust, the momentum causes it to drift away from the Sun. However, some of the bigger pieces don’t just float away. The heavier bits stick around and form the tail of the comet. As the light gets re-emitted in a random direction, we catch the view of the comet’s tail down on Earth. <br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/3-missions-to-mars-launch-this-month-from-nasa-china-and-the-united-arab-emirates-heres-what-theyll-do-on-the-red-planet/articleshow/76949688.cms">3 missions to Mars launch this month, from NASA, China, and the United Arab Emirates — here's what they'll do on the red planet</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/nasa-new-rules-to-protect-mars-and-moon-from-earth-germs/articleshow/76906055.cms">NASA issues new guidelines to protect the Moon and Mars from Earth's germs</a><br /><br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/nasas-latest-pictures-from-mars-are-fascinating-showing-where-the-curiosity-rover-is-headed-next/articleshow/76825564.cms"><strong>NASA's latest pictures from Mars are fascinating — showing where the Curiosity rover is headed next</strong></a><br />

Comet Neowise will burn bright over India for the next 20 days after two earlier comets fizzled out

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="9531572" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="comet-neowise">Comet Neowise</keyword> has dazzled stargazers this week, but its surprise appearance highlights one of Earth's greatest vulnerabilities.</li><li><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword> discovered the comet hurtling towards Earth three months ago, but only because one of its space <keyword id="62018" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Telescopes">telescopes</keyword> got lucky.</li><li>Our planet is woefully unprepared for the enormous, deadly rocks that hurtle towards us from deep space. But a telescope NASA is developing could track more dangerous <keyword id="81841" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Asteroids">asteroids</keyword>.</li></ul><p>A welcome distraction has turned the world's eyes to the sky this week. Comet Neowise, a 3-mile-wide chunk of space ice, is rocketing past our planet, creating a spectacle in the night: a brilliant ball of white light with long, colorful tails.</p><p>The comet is a benign and beautiful sight, but it highlights a global vulnerability. Tens of thousands of potentially dangerous objects regularly careen past Earth undetected, and some of them inevitably crash into it.</p><p><keyword id="51550" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="comets">Comets</keyword> — balls of space ice and dust — almost never pose a threat to Earth, but asteroids and meteors (smaller chunks of rock) come close more often. Although impacts are extremely rare, a space rock big enough to destroy a city (or worse) could hurtle towards Earth at any time, and scientists might not see it until it's far too late.</p><p>Nobody even knew Comet Neowise existed until a NASA space telescope discovered it approaching just three months ago. The spacecraft was scanning for asteroids and comets (balls of space ice and dust) that fly too close to Earth. The mission is called the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) — that's where the new comet gets its name.</p><p><div type="image" title="comet neowise belarus" height="1918" width="2557" msid="77038711" hostid="261"></div></p><p>"This is an example of an object coming out of deep space that our survey capabilities need to be able to spot," Lindley Johnson, a <keyword id="2812558" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="planetary-defense">planetary defense</keyword> officer at NASA, said in a press briefing about Comet Neowise on Wednesday. "In this case, we were lucky that it did cross the field of view of the NEOWISE spacecraft back in March."</p><p>Many "<keyword id="1821718" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="near-Earth-objects">near-Earth objects</keyword>" (NEOs) do not cross any telescope's line of sight, and several potentially dangerous asteroids have snuck up on Earth in recent years.</p><p>"Luck is not a plan," Richard Binzel, an asteroid researcher and professor of planetary sciences at MIT, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-telescope-to-detect-deadly-asteroids-2019-9">told Business Insider</a> in September.</p><h2>Dangerous asteroids can fly under the radar</h2><p><div type="image" title="Chicxulub_impact asteroid" height="2089" width="2785" msid="77038716" hostid="261"></div></p><p>A 6-mile-wide asteroid surprised the dinosaurs 65 million years ago when it crashed into Earth. The impact caused a mile-high tsunami, sparked wildfires, and released billions of tons of sulfur into the atmosphere, blotting out the sun for years. That was the end of the age of big lizards.</p><p>In case scientists discover such an asteroid approaching Earth again, NASA has considered some ways to push it off its collision course: slamming a spacecraft into it, detonating an explosion near it, or firing lasers that heat and vaporize the rock enough to change its orbit.</p><p>But that takes time and the technology is unproven. What if nobody spots the asteroid until it's too late?</p><p>In recent years, scientists have missed plenty of large, dangerous objects approaching Earth.</p><p>"We feel we've only found about a third of the population of asteroids that are out there that could represent an impact hazard to the Earth," Johnson said.</p><p>In 2013, a meteor measuring about 65 feet in diameter and traveling at 40,000 mph entered the atmosphere and exploded over Chelyabinsk in central Russia. The blast sent out a shock wave that broke windows and damaged buildings across the region, injuring more than 1,400 people.</p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-threat-of-meteor-crashing-into-earth-is-bigger-than-you-think-2019-5">According to NASA modeling</a>, an event like the Chelyabinsk meteor occurs about every 60 years. That same day, a larger asteroid came within 17,000 miles of Earth.</p><p><div type="image" title="asteroid russia Chelyabinsk" height="3744" width="5616" msid="77038726" hostid="261"></div></p><p>Then a year ago a 427-foot-wide, "city-killer" asteroid <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-flies-close-to-earth-surprising-scientists-2019-7">flew within 45,000 miles of Earth</a>. NASA had almost no warning about it.</p><p>That's because right now, the only way scientists can track an NEO is by pointing a telescope toward the right place at the right time. Telescopes detect the sunlight that asteroids reflect, but the smaller the asteroid, the fainter the reflection. Plus, some asteroids just aren't very reflective.</p><p><div type="image" title="NEOWISE" height="1024" width="1365" msid="77038734" hostid="261"></div></p><p>NEOWISE (the NASA mission, not the comet) is not enough to protect us on its own, and it is living on borrowed time. Hunting asteroids is its second career, which came after it outlived its first mission: scanning the entire sky twice in infrared light. That initial project yielded copious data on distant stars and galaxies.</p><p>"This is a telescope that is well past its expiration date and, like a very old car, every day is a gift," Amy Mainzer, the telescope's principal investigator, said. "We're not really sure how much longer it's going to go. In theory, maybe another year at most."</p><p>When NEOWISE goes dark, it will leave Earth even more oblivious to threats from space.</p><h2>NASA is planning its first planetary defense spacecraft</h2><p><div type="image" title="neocam asteroid hunter spacecraft discovery nasa jpl caltech" height="1476" width="1968" msid="77038739" hostid="261"></div></p><p>A plan for better NEO surveillance finally gained some traction in September, when NASA announced plans for a new asteroid-hunting space telescope. The project is still in its early stages, though.</p><p>Called the Near-Earth Object Surveillance Mission (NEOSM), the spacecraft would feature heat-sensing infrared sensors capable of detecting even dark asteroids, which are the most difficult to find. (Because the sun warms up space rocks, they emit infrared light even if they don't reflect much visible light.)</p><p>Unlike NEOWISE, NEOSM would be dedicated to tracking objects near Earth. It would also fix a major blind spot: It could pick up on objects coming from the direction of the sun, where most telescopes can't look.</p><p>"This is the first time NASA has ever voiced a commitment to flying a space-based asteroid survey," Binzel said of the mission. "They've always said 'we'll study it, we'll study it,' and now they say 'we are going to do it.'"</p><p>The agency's 2020 budget allotted nearly $36 million for the telescope's development. If funding continues, it could launch as early as 2025.</p><p>"Having knowledge of what's out there is something that the planetary <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> community has been advocating for for nearly 30 years," Binzel said. "This is a breakthrough decades in the making."</p>

Comet Neowise is a dazzling sight, but it's also a reminder of how woefully unprepared we are for dangerous asteroids

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="7612156" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="starlink">Starlink</keyword> <keyword id="41530" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="satellites">satellites</keyword> photobombed <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/comet-neowise-passing-close-to-earth-dazzling-photos-videos-2020-7">Comet Neowise</a> in a striking photo. The juxtaposition highlights astronomers' concerns about <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-zero-impact-astronomy-2020-3">Elon Musk</a>'s internet project.</li><li>The photo is a composite of 17 images taken over 30 seconds, so it doesn't show what you would see with the naked eye.</li><li>Still, plenty of <keyword id="6391802" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="astronomy">astronomy</keyword> research relies on long-exposure images, and Starlink's streaks of light could <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-asks-for-meeting-with-eso-over-starlink-satellites-2020-3">ruin scientists' work</a>.</li></ul><p><keyword id="6355315" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="elon-musk">Elon Musk</keyword>'s growing constellation of internet satellites has been sending streaks of bright light across night skies around the world. Even the biggest comet to pass Earth in 25 years wasn't spared. </p><p>A striking photo showing <keyword id="9531572" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="comet-neowise">Comet Neowise</keyword> behind those streaks of light shows how easily the satellites can upstage observations of distant objects in space.</p><p><div type="image" title="comet neowise starlink" height="2099" width="1757" msid="77247970" hostid="261"></div></p><p>The satellite project, called Starlink, is Musk's plan to blanket Earth in high-speed satellite internet. The effort has drawn criticism from professional and amateur astronomers, however, because the bright satellites can mar the skies and disrupt telescope observations.</p><p>That's what happened to the astrophotographer <a href="http://www.elcielodecanarias.com/">Daniel López</a> on July 21, when he was shooting Comet Neowise before it flies out of view for another 6,800 years. He <a href="https://www.facebook.com/elcielodecanarias.es/photos/a.224658390885198/4415045628513099">shared</a> the resulting image on the Facebook page of his photography company, El Cielo de Canarias, saying it was a shame to see the satellites make such a spectacle.</p><p>López's photo is a composite of 17 images taken in the span of 30 seconds. Each image was long exposure, meaning it captured the comet over several seconds.</p><p>The astronomer Julien Girard shared the picture on <a href="https://twitter.com/djulik/status/1286053695956881409">Twitter</a>, saying the satellites had "completely photobombed" the comet.</p><p>"Two of my pictures the other night were also bombed by a Starlink," Girard said.</p><p>López also shared the time-lapse video behind the picture. He added that traces of the satellites were visible in 20 of his images.</p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/elcielodecanarias.es/posts/4424824440868551">Post</a> by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/">El Cielo de Canarias</a>.<p>Because it's a composite time-lapse photo, the image doesn't show what you would see with the naked eye. But it illustrates why many astronomers worry about the threat that <keyword id="518734" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="satellite-constellations">satellite constellations</keyword> like Starlink pose to ground-based astronomy.</p><h2>Too many satellites could mess with astronomy on Earth</h2><p>Long-exposure images are a crucial part of studying distant objects in the night sky. Telescopes on Earth watch celestial targets for hours, slowly building up a detailed image that offers astronomers rich data.</p><p>But one poorly timed Starlink satellite can ruin that kind of research by creating a long streak across the image and blocking the objects that astronomers want to study.</p><p><div type="image" title="starlink train" height="1013" width="1351" msid="77247974" hostid="261"></div></p><p>"In that couple of seconds, a whole 10- or 15-minute exposure is ruined," the astronomer Jonathan McDowell told Business Insider in June.</p><p><keyword id="6360701" type="DEFINITION" weightage="60" keywordseo="spacex">SpaceX</keyword> is sharing Starlink's orbital-path data with astronomers so that they can plan their telescope observations around the satellites' movements. Briefly shutting off the camera as the satellite passes overhead can save a long-exposure image.</p><p>But Musk's ambitions could make it nearly impossible to avoid the fast-moving satellites. SpaceX has sought government permission to put <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-internet-satellites-itc-filing-30000-additional-42000-total-2019-10">a total of 42,000 satellites into orbit</a> to form a "megaconstellation" around Earth. </p><p>"If they're coming over all the time, then knowing when they're coming over isn't helpful," McDowell said. Even now, he added, sometimes astronomers can't avoid the photobombers.</p><p><div type="image" title="starlink satellites flat packed stack payload falcon 9 rocket spacex twitter D7THAABVUAATipL" height="675" width="900" msid="77247977" hostid="261"></div></p><p>SpaceX isn't the only company building a massive fleet of satellites. Companies like OneWeb and Amazon have similar ambitions.</p><p>"The sky will not be what it has been for millions of years. Thousands of dots will appear and disappear in the night sky," López told <a href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/spacex-satellites-ruin-perfectly-good-view-of-comet-neo-1844483615?fbclid=IwAR1Io31r8rgt4LJumHuiNb7dID2aFEubFURyETfzjgwiUWiOHnCcYy5C9o0">Gizmodo</a>. "I personally think that if no action is taken, it will be the end of astronomy as we know it from the surface of the Earth."</p><p>Professional astronomers have given similarly dire warnings. </p><p>"The night sky is for everybody. It has been scrutinized and used for millennia," Girard <a href="https://twitter.com/djulik/status/1286695694141726721">said</a>. "We should cherish it and protect it just like our Earth."</p>

Elon Musk's Starlink satellites photobombed Comet Neowise in a photographer's striking image

<ul><li>The COSMA supercomputer was used to create 3D simulations of what would happen to a planet’s atmosphere due to giant impacts. <br /></li><li>Scientists at Durham University created 3D videos of what it would look like if an object were to come hurtling towards an Earth-like planet in the early universe. <br /></li><li>Using the results of the study, scientists estimate that the Earth got lucky with its impact that created the Moon.<br /></li></ul>A supercomputer can do many things, including creating 3D simulations of what it may look like when Earth faces a giant impact. Scientists used the COSMA supercomputer to show exactly what would happen to an Earth-like planet in the early universe if a giant object were to smash into its atmosphere.<br /><br />Planets aren’t created overnight. It takes billions of years of evolution to get the rocks and gas to come together to create what can be called a planetary body. If in the middle of that formation, something smashes into the planet before its whole — it can have wide-ranging consequences, like atmospheric loss. <br /><br />The 3D videos created by scientists at Durham University and the University of Glasgow propose two different scenarios. One, where the impact is head-on and another, with a grazing impact.<br /><br /><div type="Video" msid="77098808" hostid="261" title="Supercomputer 3D-video of head-on planetary collision" dataSource="BUSINESSINSIDER" thumbUrl="https://denmark.timesinternet.in/cmslite/api/app/images.jpg?msid=77098808"></div><em>Source: Durham University</em><br /><br />Grazing impacts, like the one that’s supposed to be the Moon’s origin story, lead to much less atmospheric loss as compared to a head-on collision, according to the study published in Astrophysical Journal.<br /><br /><div type="Video" msid="77098825" hostid="261" title="Supercomputer 3D-video of grazing planetary collision" dataSource="BUSINESSINSIDER" thumbUrl="https://denmark.timesinternet.in/cmslite/api/app/images.jpg?msid=77098825"></div><em>Source: Durham University</em><br /><br />A head-on collision is more dangerous since the impact can penetrate through to the mantle — the layer that sits just above the planet’s crust.<br /><br />  <div type="image" title="earth layers" msid="77098855" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Layers of the Earth&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br />Using the results of this study, the study estimates that Earth got lucky with its collision that created the Moon. The impact only managed to wipe out between 10% to 50% of its atmosphere. <br /><br />"In spite of the remarkably diverse consequences that can come from different impact angles and speeds, we've found a simple way to predict how much atmosphere would be lost,” said the lead author of the study, Jacob Kegerries. <br /><br />Going forward, the scientists will continue to carry out more varied simulations to test the effect varying masses and compositions have on the results. <br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/nasa-new-rules-to-protect-mars-and-moon-from-earth-germs/articleshow/76906055.cms">NASA issues new guidelines to protect the Moon and Mars from Earth's germs</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/uae-mars-mission-hope-probe-on-its-way-to-red-planet-here-is-everything-you-need-to-know/articleshow/77064837.cms">The Hope Probe is on its way to Mars — everything you need to know about the UAE’s first jump into interplanetary space</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/pictures-of-comet-neowise-in-swiss-alps-stonehenge-and-other-parts-of-the-world/slidelist/77034838.cms">IN PICS: Comet NEOWISE spotted blazing from the Stonehenge to the Swiss Alps, in skies all over the world</a><br /><br /></strong><br />

WATCH: Supercomputer generates 3D videos that show how Earth may have lost half of its atmosphere to create the Moon

<p>The moon is the largest object floating through space around Earth, but it's not the only one. Actually, there are numerous rocky objects living in our inner solar system that occasionally pass by Earth.</p><p>Duncan Forgan, a research fellow at the University of St. Andrews, recently wrote about one such object called 3753 Cruithne (pronounced krooy-nyuh) on <a href="http://theconversation.com/earths-other-moon-and-its-crazy-orbit-could-reveal-mysteries-of-the-solar-system-38010">The Conversation</a>, where he's calling it "second moon."</p><p>Here's the best picture we have of this tiny, rocky "moon" that's only about 3 miles across. Because of its small size, astronomers need powerful instruments to see Cruithne. The telescope at <a href="http://www.askc.org/powell.htm">Powell Observatory</a> took the image below, where it only shows up as a tiny speck of light.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>The space-based instrument <a href="http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/programs/neowise.html">NEOWISE</a> took five images of Cruithne that are compiled into a single image below. NEOWISE scours the sky for near-earth objects like asteroid and comets.<p>The reason the object appears red in this image is because it is radiating light at lower energies than the white stars in the background, <a href="https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Bauer/">James Bauer</a>, a scientist who studies comets at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explained to Business Insider in an email.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Cruithne is a type of object called an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aten_asteroid">Aten asteroid</a>, which is a group of asteroids that live within the inner solar system between Earth and the sun. It has a weird path through space where it orbits both the sun and the Earth in a strange kidney-shaped path.</p><p>Aten asteroids are relatively small, which is why astronomers only recently discovered them. The first Aten asteroid was found in 1976 and Cruithne was not discovered until 1994.</p><h2>How to see it</h2><p><a href="http://www.astro.uwo.ca/~wiegert/">Paul Wiegert</a>, who studies Cruithne at the University of Western Ontario, told Business Insider in an email that "it's very hard to see [Cruithne] in even a very large telescope except as a small star like dot."</p><p>But it is possible.</p><p>Below is an image of where the object will be in the sky tomorrow [Wednesday] morning during sunrise. Wiegert pin points the exact location and says: "You'd have to look towards the sunrise. The asteroid is at the center of the red cross, and not far from the planet Mercury, in the constellation of Capricorn."</p><p>You'll need access to a pretty powerful telescope, though. "It is so faint that there is no way to find it by eye," Wiegert said. "Or even with a modest telescope."</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/end-fall-demise-mayan-civilization-new-evidence-2015-1">Scientists Discovered What Actually Wiped Out The Mayan Civilization</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="55ampxcjoS7Wta3JMLFeUrzwVtgPrh0g" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

These are the only pictures we have of Earth's 'second moon'

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>On January 4, NASA announced <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-new-asteroid-missions-2017-1">two new space missions</a> to explore the solar system: Lucy, a probe that will visit swarms of ancient asteroids lurking near Jupiter, and Psyche, which will orbit the all-metal core of a dead planet.</p><p>These winners of the Discovery program, as it's known, will each get $450 million to build their robots, plus a rocket to launch them.</p><p>"This is what Discovery Program missions are all about - boldly going to places we've never been to enable groundbreaking <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword>," Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-two-missions-to-explore-the-early-solar-system">a Jan. 4 press release</a>.</p><p>But in a pile of rejected finalists, sitting alongside two conceptual <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/venus-deadly-surface-conditions-2016-12">missions to Venus</a>, is a space telescope that might one day save countless lives on Earth from a killer asteroid: a threat Zurbuchen himself <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6669">has said</a> is "not a matter of if - but when."</p><p>It's called the <a href="http://neocam.ipac.caltech.edu">Near-Earth Objects Camera</a>, or NEOCam, and it promises to discover tens of thousands of rogue space rocks roughly 460 feet (140 meters) in diameter or bigger. That size is by design: Congress <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-109publ155/pdf/PLAW-109publ155.pdf">passed a law in 2005</a> charging NASA - as one of its seven explicitly stated goals - to find 90% of such near-Earth objects (NEOs) by 2020.</p><p>The reason is because asteroids and comets of this size are notoriously difficult to detect, yet can slug our planet or explode in our atmosphere with the energy of least 60 megatons' worth of TNT. That's more powerful than the largest <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-nuclear-weapons-expansion-risk-2017-1">nuclear weapon</a> ever detonated.</p><p>"You do that over a city, and it's a very, very bad day," <a href="https://www.psi.edu/about/staffpage/sykes">Mark Sykes</a>, director of the Planetary Science Institute and a scientist on the NEOCam team, told Business Insider. "It's important to look at your neighborhood, from a planetary defense standpoint."</p><p>While NASA did commit to partially fund NEOCam for a year, it's effectively the space agency's third pass on launching the telescope in a decade. (The mission was submitted in two previous rounds of Discovery.)</p><p>Meanwhile, NASA is running years behind its Congressional mandate to find NEOs, and Earth is mostly blind to threats that might one day level a city.</p><p>Just this past Monday, for instance, an asteroid possibly as large as a 10-story building <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-flyby-nearer-than-moon-2017-1">flew past Earth closer than the moon</a> at 9.8 miles per second (15.7 kilometers per second) - and yet astronomers only learned of its existence 2 days beforehand.</p><h2>We live on a moving target for killer space rocks</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Astronomers like to say Earth is drifting through a cosmic shooting gallery.</p><p>It's no wonder why.</p><p>Any space rock that zooms within 125 million miles (200 million kilometers) of Earth is considered an NEO, and - so far - humanity has located about <a href="http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/">15,500 such objects</a>. Relative to Earth, the average one is about <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6664">30 million miles</a> (50 million kilometers) away and moving <a href="https://spaceguardcentre.com/what-are-neos/near-earth-objects-impact-effects/">between</a> 27,000 mph (12 kilometers per second) and 45,000 mph (20 kilometers per second) - akin to flying the length of Manhattan once a second.</p><p>About 9% of these NEOs, or some <a href="http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/groups.html">1,759 space rocks</a>, are called "potentially hazardous" objects (PHOs), meaning they come within 4.6 million miles (7.48 million kilometers) of Earth.</p><p>Their sizes vary wildly, so a strike could mean anything from broken windows, like the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/no-one-saw-chelyabinsk-meteor-over-russia-coming-could-happen-again-2016-4">2013 asteroid-caused air burst over Chelyabinsk, Russia</a>, to global extinction, like the impact that helped <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/dinosaur-extinction-may-have-been-affected-by-slow-egg-incubations-2016-12">wipe out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago</a>.</p><p>The animation below, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/asteroids-near-earth-animation-youtube-2016-3">by Scott Manley</a>, shows what the playing field looks like these days, and it is not comforting. Planets are teal (Earth is the third one from center), yellow and red show NEOs (red means they cross Earth's orbit), and green shows more distant, main-belt asteroids:</p><p>But these are just the ones we know about.</p><p>Roughly 72% of all NEOs that are 460 feet (140 meters) or larger have <em>not</em> been found, according to the "<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/NSTC/national_neo_preparedness_strategy_final.pdf">National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy</a>", a report published by the White House's National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in December 2016. This amounts to about 25,000 nearby asteroids and roughly 2,300 hazardous ones.</p><p>That doesn't mean we shouldn't be worried about smaller space rocks, though; in fact, quite the opposite.</p><p>"An asteroid much smaller, just 45 meters [150 feet] across, exploded in 1908 over Tunguska with an explosive energy of several megatons and destroyed an area as large as New York City," <a href="http://stanford.edu/~rdb3/">Roger Blandford</a>, a physicist at Stanford University, wrote in <a href="http://spacenews.com/op-ed-policing-the-cosmic-neighborhood/">a September 2015 op-ed for Space News</a>. "Congress calls these smaller asteroids 'city killers,' and although they are 30 times more numerous, we have located less than 1% of them."</p><p>In raw numbers, "over 300,000 objects greater than 40 meters [130 feet] in size could be an impact hazard to the Earth and have not yet been detected," according to NSTC's report.</p><p>The chart below, recently created by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech, sums up the gaping holes (in green) of NEO survey efforts thus far:</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="NASA/JPL-Caltech" title_caption="Fewer asteroids exist than previously thought, but smaller space rocks elude easy detection." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image-960/587564a8f10a9a283f8b5274-2400"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></div><p></p></div></div><p>If you're a space rock, you reflect sunlight. Telescopes that are looking in the right place at the right time can see you as a dot sneaking across the blackness of space, allowing scientists to calculate your mass, speed, orbit, and the odds that you'll smack into Earth.</p><p>If you're a small NEO, though, you aren't very bright. This means a telescope has to be very big and use very advanced hardware to find you - but big, bad telescopes are expensive and take a very long time to build and calibrate.</p><p>Take the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), for example, which is one of Earth's best current hopes of finding killer asteroids. The project broke ground in 2015 and is expected to <a href="https://www.lsst.org/sites/default/files/ProjectOverviewKahnLSST2014.pdf">cost upwards of $465 million to build</a>. Based on its current <a href="https://www.lsst.org/about/timeline">construction schedule</a>, it won't be fully operational until late 2021, at the soonest, or able to fulfill the 90% detection goal set by Congress until the mid-2030s - more than a decade behind-schedule.</p><p>LSST, like all ground-based observatories, also comes with two major limitations.</p><p>The first: "You can't see asteroids near the sun. You're blinded by the sky," Sykes said. "Right now we have to wait until those pop out in front of us. To get those guys, you really need to be in space - where you're not blinded by the sky."</p><p>Sykes said the other snag is that ground-based telescopes mainly rely on visible light for detection.</p><p>"If [an asteroid] has a dark surface, it's going to be very hard to see," he said.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>NEOCam goes after these two problems by being in space, where no atmospheric gases get in the way, and by using an advanced, high-resolution infrared (IR) camera.</p><p>IR light is a longer wavelength of light that's invisible to our eyes, but if a source is strong enough - say, a roaring fire - we can feel it as warmth on our skin.</p><p>Sun-warmed asteroids emit infrared light, even when they're coasting through the void, or are too dark for ground-based telescopes to see. Which means NEOCam could spot them <a href="http://neocam.ipac.caltech.edu/page/whyinfrared">by their heat signatures</a>.</p><p>The approach works. The prime example is NASA's 8-year-old Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope, which has found <a href="http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/wise/">at least 230 NEOs and 42 PHOs</a> from orbit.</p><p>However, it's a less powerful telescope, has a smaller field of view, an older camera that requires cryogenic cooling (NEOCam's does not), and wasn't designed solely to hunt asteroids. While scientists gave it a new mission to do so in 2013, <a href="http://neowise.ipac.caltech.edu/">renaming the project NEOWISE</a>, the telescope is scheduled to end operations in March 2017.</p><p>"[A] space-based observatory, working in concert with observations from ground-based telescopes, may be the best approach to detecting, tracking, and characterizing the NEO population," the NSTC's December 2016 report states. "This combination would more rapidly complete the survey of objects larger than 140 meters [460 feet] while greatly improving our understanding of the hazard from the 50-140 meter [160-460 feet] NEO population."</p><p>The NEOCam team proposed to launch in 2021 and find two-thirds of missing objects in the larger-than-460-feet (140 meters) category within 4 years - about a decade ahead of LSST's schedule.</p><p>This would help address the NSTC's concern on the issue:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"Finding NEOs as early as possible is the first priority for planetary defense, in order to give adequate time to make decisions and implement courses of action. This fact must be stressed: the earlier a NEO threat is detected, the better the emergency response to the threat will be."</p><p>So if launching a capable replacement for NEOWISE is a priority, why didn't NASA pick it?</p><h2>The forces keeping NEOCam grounded</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Only NASA knows why it didn't pick NEOCam for launch, but it isn't telling anyone, not even Sykes and his colleagues - at least not yet.</p><p>The space agency first wants to debrief the NEOCam team on the snags it saw with of its <a href="https://discovery.nasa.gov">Discovery program</a> proposal, a meeting that a NASA representative said will happen as early as next week.</p><p>"The Discovery review process identified strengths and weaknesses for all 5 mission proposals. As with Lucy and Psyche, NEOCam will be asked to address any issues that were raised in the review," David Schurr, deputy director of NASA's planetary science program, told Business Insider in an emailed statement.</p><p>During NEOCam's debriefing, the space agency will "work and negotiate with the [...] team" on a funding level for the next year, <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/about-us/leadership/dr-jim-green">Jim Green</a>, director of NASA's planetary science division, told reporters during a Jan. 4 NASA teleconference.</p><p>"Whether it's a drip or a flood, we'll find out soon," Sykes said.</p><p>After that year of funding runs out, however, all bets are currently off: NASA will have to "<a href="https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/819226787305627648">look for money</a>" under a new presidential administration, according to Green, if it wants to keep the project alive. ("No flow, no go," Sykes said.)</p><p>The hangup with NEOCam is not likely any lack of engineering prowess - "the rumor is that there were no major weaknesses [with the proposal]," one source who asked not to be named told Business Insider - but rather a bureaucratic technicality: a case of trying to jam a square peg into a round hole.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>That's because the mandate of NASA's Discovery program is to pull off scientific "firsts" in the solar system.<p>An unprecedented mission to the metal core of a dead planet fits the bill, while a space-based asteroid detector is something humanity already tried with WISE (the NEO hunter launched in 2009).</p><p>But Sykes contends that NEOCam is a truly unique mission that could help NASA pull off its next planned era of crewed exploration - <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-nasa-mars-sample-return-mission-2016-12">to near-Earth asteroids</a> - by locating most of the remaining NEOs of interest.</p><p>"If we want to send people beyond low-Earth orbit, an asteroid costs much less than the surface of the moon or Mars," Sykes said. "We can identify targets that are quick-turnaround times of weeks or months, to minimize the radiation exposure [in deep space] to astronauts."</p><p>In addition, Sykes said, finding perhaps tens of thousands of new NEOs would lay more groundwork for efforts to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-value-of-asteroid-mining-2016-11">mine asteroids for precious metals</a>, gather fuel for deep-space exploration, and other novel (and scientific) human endeavors.</p><p>Former astronaut <a href="https://b612foundation.org/our-team/#ed-lu">Ed Lu</a>, who's also a co-founder of <a href="https://b612foundation.org">the B612 Foundation</a> - a group dedicated to launching its own NEO-detecting space telescope, called <a href="https://b612foundation.org/sentinel/">Sentinel</a> - has grown impatient with the delays.</p><p>To get an asteroid hunter off the ground, Lu said, NASA needs to try something new, and fast.</p><p>"[T]here should be an open competition based on a planetary defense rather than a science requirement, as with the Discovery mission," Lu told Business Insider in an email. "Detecting dangerous asteroids is a concern of national security, not just science."</p><p>Blandford, the Stanford physicist, hit this message home in <a href="http://spacenews.com/op-ed-policing-the-cosmic-neighborhood/">his Space News op-ed</a>.</p><p>"[P]lanetary defense is currently treated as a scientific issue, and forced to compete with other science missions," he wrote, "instead of being seen as a long-term imperative for the protection of humanity."</p><p><em>Kelly Dickerson and Paul Szoldra contributed to this post.</em></p><div><div style="position:relative;padding-bottom:59%"></div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/molten-salt-reactor-technology-power-world-millions-years-2016-12">This Cold War-era technology could safely power the world for millions of years</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="hoOXhiODE6mtYAnzOSgYhFwj_jwPpGtb" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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