Astronomers at the Pan-Starrs-1 telescope in Maui have discovered an asteroid that became the 10,000th near Earth object, asteroids and comets that may come within 28 million miles of the Earth's orbital distance, observed by NASA, according to NASA.
"Finding 10,000 near-Earth objects is a significant milestone," Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA Headquarters, said. "But there are at least 10 times that many more to be found before we can be assured we will have found any and all that could impact and do significant harm to the citizens of Earth."
In the past ten years Lindley has overseen the discovery of 76 percent of all known near-Earth objects. Of the near-Earth objects that have been discovered some are as small as only a few feet across while others are massive, asteroid 1036 Ganymed is 25 miles across, according to NASA.
The recently discovered asteroid, asteroid 2013 MZ5 is roughly 1,000 feet across. Scientists have been able to plot its orbit and have determined that it does not have the potential to strike Earth.
"The first near-Earth object was discovered in 1898," Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said. "Over the next hundred years, only about 500 had been found. But then, with the advent of NASA's NEO Observations program in 1998, we've been racking them up ever since. And with new, more capable systems coming on line, we are learning even more about where the NEOs are currently in our solar system, and where they will be in the future."
Luckily for the citizens of Earth only about 10 percent of the near-Earth objects that have been discovered are large enough to create global consequences if they were to strike the planet. Even better for Earth's citizens is that none of those is likely to ever collide with Earth, according to NASA.
Discovering near-Earth objects used to be incredibly difficult to do, mostly because some of them are so small. While an asteroid a mile wide might sound enormous when put in the context of it striking Earth it is really very tiny when given the context of trying to see it from 20 million miles away.
"When I began surveying for asteroids and comets in 1992, a near-Earth object discovery was a rare event," Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center said. "These days we average three NEO discoveries a day, and each month the Minor Planet Center receives hundreds of thousands of observations on asteroids, including those in the main-belt. The work done by the NASA surveys, and the other international professional and amateur astronomers, to discover and track NEOs is really remarkable."
The next goal for NASA is to be able to detect at least 90 percent of near-Earth objects larger than 500 feet in size. Once that goal is met the risk of Earth being hit by a near-Earth object will be incredibly low, only one percent of what the risk was before detection. If a near-Earth object is known about well ahead of time current space technology allows us to deflect it from making contact with Earth, according to NASA.
To learn more about asteroids and what NASA is doing to track them you can go here or here. You can also follow them on Twitter @asteroidwatch.
