Scanning the Heavens

The recent exercise in December 2008 by the US Air Force to assess the ability to cope with a collision with a Near Earth Object again highlighted how limited is the Earth's capability to detect or prevent such an event taking place. Recently however a Near Earth Object did indeed come into contact with the Earth in October 2008. Designated 2008 TC3 this car sized object exploded over the Sudan but was only spotted by a telescope (the Catalina Sky Survey) with 20 hours notice and at a distance of 500,000 kilometres from our planet. Although the likelihood of a catastrophic asteroid collision is extremely rare, the potential for a strike from a smaller but still destructive near earth body has much greater plausibility.

This situation again raises the need for a greater overall surveillance of the space around Earth and in relation to the Earth's orbit around the Sun. The proposal to increase surveillance through the Panoramic Survey telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) as well as the proposed Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile (providing the project is completed by 2015) will complement the existing monitoring programs. The next question is what action to take if a large body is located on a trajectory to Earth.