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At a recent scientific meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS<\/a>) in Phoenix, Arizona, the scale of that blind spot came into sharp focus as officials outlined how many dangerous objects still elude detection.\u00a0<\/p>\n Speaking there, Dr. Kelly Fast, NASA\u2019s acting Planetary Defense Officer, detailed the tally of roughly 25,000 known, city-scale asteroids and confirmed that about 40 percent have been catalogued so far.\u00a0<\/p>\n The remaining majority continue to orbit unnoticed, not because they are rare, but because many are dark or positioned in parts of the sky that telescopes struggle to monitor.\u00a0<\/p>\n As long as those objects remain missing from the catalog, any strategy to deflect one depends first on finding it in time<\/a>.<\/p>\n Why many asteroids stay hidden<\/p>\n Most telescopes scan for reflected sunlight, yet many mid-size asteroids spend years near the Sun\u2019s glare from Earth.<\/p>\n Dark coatings cut albedo \u2013 the amount of sunlight that a surface reflects \u2013 so even large rocks can look like faint dots.<\/p>\n Earthlike orbits also keep some objects moving almost alongside us, which makes them harder to spot as movers.<\/p>\n Without early sightings from different angles, orbit forecasts stay fuzzy, and mission planners cannot act with confidence.<\/p>\n When rocks hit hard<\/p>\n On June 30, 1908, the Tunguska<\/a> blast over Siberia in Russia flattened about 830 square miles (2,150 square kilometers) of forest.<\/p>\n A rocky body about 130 feet (40 meters) across exploded in the air, and the shock wave toppled trees far beyond ground zero.<\/p>\n Over a modern city, that kind of airburst would rip roofs, ignite fuel, and overwhelm hospitals within the first hour.<\/p>\n Impacts this size do not happen often, but they explain why a single missed object<\/a> can become a national crisis.<\/p>\n Time is the weapon<\/p>\n Years of notice would allow scientists to tighten an orbit forecast, then let engineers pick a response that fits the threat.<\/p>\n Small errors add up quickly, because each pass near Earth lets gravity from planets bend a path a little more.<\/p>\n Designing and launching a spacecraft takes time, and long travel times mean the final approach cannot be rushed.<\/p>\n Lose that lead time, and officials may need evacuations and emergency shelters, since no space fix arrives overnight.<\/p>\n DART and asteroid orbits<\/p>\n In 2022, NASA\u2019s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART<\/a>, struck Dimorphos and changed its orbit around a larger asteroid.<\/p>\n That impact worked as a kinetic impactor, a spacecraft that hits an asteroid to nudge it, using pure momentum.<\/p>\n Measurements after the collision showed a 32-minute change in Dimorphos\u2019 orbit, which proved that rock can move.<\/p>\n Even with that proof, deflection still depends on early discovery, since planners must know where to aim years ahead.<\/p>\n Surveyor spots the dark asteroids<\/p>\n NASA plans the Near-Earth Object Surveyor<\/a>, an infrared space telescope built to find dark asteroids by their heat.<\/p>\n Its detectors target near-Earth objects \u2013 space rocks and comets that pass close to Earth\u2019s orbit \u2013 including those that are hard to see.<\/p>\n A 2023 mission analysis<\/a> mapped how the telescope could reach the 90-percent catalog goal within a decade.<\/p>\n With launch planned no earlier than September 2027, Surveyor would boost warning time, yet some threats could remain unseen.<\/p>\n Ground surveys add speed<\/p>\n Large ground telescopes can sweep wide areas of sky each night, and they can spot new objects by motion.<\/p>\n Repeated images let software link a moving dot across frames, then compute a preliminary orbit within hours.<\/p>\n Weather, daylight, and bright moonlight still cut observing time, and ground surveys struggle to watch the space near the Sun.<\/p>\n Space-based searching fills that gap, since an infrared telescope<\/a> can look closer to the Sun without atmospheric glare.<\/p>\n Turning asteroid alerts into action<\/p>\n Once a telescope finds a new asteroid, teams publish its path estimates and update them as fresh observations arrive.<\/p>\n Each update narrows an impact probability \u2013 the chance an orbit<\/a> intersects Earth \u2013 and that number guides planning.<\/p>\n Public warnings also need clear timing, because early predictions can swing as uncertainty shrinks and new data arrives.<\/p>\n Reliable decision-making depends on steady communication, since a late change from safe to dangerous could trigger chaos.<\/p>\n Finding asteroids in Earth orbit<\/p>\n Finding and tracking every risky asteroid is slow work, and it competes with many other missions for money and attention.<\/p>\n Building better surveys means stable funding for telescopes, data pipelines, and the people who keep catalogs accurate.<\/p>\n International coordination matters too, because an asteroid does not respect borders and response choices affect many countries.<\/p>\n Without sustained investment, the world keeps gambling on luck, even though better detection is a problem humans can solve.<\/p>\n A clear next step<\/p>\n Better detection makes asteroid defense practical, because more warning time lets scientists track orbits and gives engineers time to act.<\/p>\n Until Surveyor and other searches fill the catalog, emergency planners still need realistic drills for impacts that may arrive with little notice.<\/p>\n Details reported<\/a> in the New York Post.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA estimates that over 15,000 asteroids, each large enough to destroy a city, remain undetected, leaving Earth virtually…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-326968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}