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Quiet - thankfully - but important work.
They're even trying to get their arms around some solutions if need be.. lest we go the way of the dinosaurs.
Space probe finds 72 new objects near Earth - CNN.com
Amanda Barnett - April 7, 2016
They're even trying to get their arms around some solutions if need be.. lest we go the way of the dinosaurs.
Space probe finds 72 new objects near Earth - CNN.com
Amanda Barnett - April 7, 2016
[......] But do you see the space rocks that could plunge into our planet, causing major destruction?
NASA does.
It's using a spacecraft called the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer, known as NEOWISE, to track near-Earth objects -- asteroids and comets -- that could hit our planet.
NEOWISE has discovered 72 new NEOs since 2013. The tally includes 8 objects that are classified as potentially hazardous asteroids -- asteroids that could one day approach or hit Earth.
NEOWISE also is helping scientists study space rocks detected earlier by ground-based telescopes. It's provided new information on a total of 439 NEOs previously detected by those telescopes.
"NEOWISE discovers large, dark, near-Earth objects, complementing our network of ground-based telescopes operating at visible-light wavelengths. On average, these objects are many hundreds of meters across," Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator, said in a news release.
If you combine the number of NEOs spotted by the satellite with the ones identified by ground-based telescopes, a total of 14,246 NEOs had been detected as of this week.
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