A photo from open sources
Asteroid 1999 RQ36, which in 2182 will approach the Earth, after the “cancellation” of the threat of Apophis and a number of other asteroids became the main a potentially dangerous object of this kind known to scientists, said Lindley near-Earth program manager at NASA Johnson. Speaking at an international conference on protection against asteroid-comet hazard in Arizona, Johnson recalled that in recent years, NASA experts have been able to “send to retired “two asteroids that were thought to threaten Earth – Asteroids 2011 AG5 and 2004 MN4, better known as Apophis. “On the At the moment, the greatest probability of a potential threat is associated with an asteroid 1999 RQ36 and 2182 (when it approaches the Earth) “, – said Johnson. He noted that NASA plans to ship to asteroid 1999 RQ36 in 2018 OSIRIS-REx probe that will measure the strength of the so-called Yarkovsky effect – a shift of the asteroid’s orbit in the result of heating one of its sides by the sun. This will allow scientists accurately assess the danger of this and other asteroids to the Earth. Johnon RIA Novosti explained that in the list of potentially dangerous objects in This asteroid is the most likely collision. By his According to him, this probability is still very small. Infrared NEOCam instrument sensors for the future of space telescope “hunter” for asteroids successfully passed the technical the test, NASA said.
NEOCam is a new space telescope project to detect potentially dangerous asteroids and other near-Earth objects, in this capacity, he must replace the completed his “career” telescope WISE. Post telescope its developers offer at the so-called Lagrange point L1 systems Earth-Sun.
Test results will be published in the Journal of Optical Engineering. As reported at the conference on protection against asteroid-comet hazard project supervisor Amy Mainzer, successfully passed tests mean that the authors of the project “ready to submit your application for the next rounds of funding” from NASA.
NASA Sun Telescope
