PASADENA, Calif. (NewsNation) — As NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth on Tuesday, the space agency is gearing up for another project: a spacecraft designed to destroy asteroids.
A NewsNation exclusive reveals NASA’s high-tech plan to save Earth if an asteroid ever comes barreling toward the planet. The NEO Surveyor, set to launch in 2027, is the first spacecraft specifically designed to find large asteroids and comets that could harm Earth.
The asteroid tracking never stops at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where scientists are working on the world’s first spacecraft designed specifically for planetary defense.
After the September 2027 launch, the NEO Surveyor will be able to spot about 90% of asteroids and comets that might pose a hazard to Earth within a range of about 30 million miles. Asteroids and comets that are smaller than about 500-feet in diameter are nearly impossible to see from Earth but not from space.
The NEO Surveyor’s infrared technology can not only detect these fast-moving objects but also measure their size and composition.
“We’re looking for near-Earth objects — those are the objects that are within the same sort of orbit as the Earth. And the reason we want to look for those is some of those have the potential to impact the Earth. So with this particular project, we’ll be looking for those in this very special spectrum called infrared, trying to detect them and find them before they find us,” said NASA NEO Surveyor project manager Tom Hoffman.
The Surveyor’s announcement comes as scientists have almost fully ruled out any threat from the asteroid 2024 YR4.
At one point, the odds of a strike in 2032 were as high as about 3% and topped the world’s asteroid-risk lists.
ESA has since lowered the odds to 0.001%. NASA has it down to 0.0017% — meaning the asteroid will safely pass Earth in 2032 and there’s no threat of impact for the next century.