Asteroid discovery brings focus of world to region

By Pepita Ridgeway

El Defensor Chieftain Reporter

pridgeway@dchieftain.com

   An asteroid two-thirds of a mile wide, discovered on Aug. 24 by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research program on White Sands Missile Range, made world news this week as astronomers tried to calculate whether Earth was in its orbit.

   Initial calculations by astronomers estimated that the asteroid could hit the planet in 2014 and world media scooped up the discovery, announcing that the asteroid was first observed in Socorro.

   Grant Stokes, principle investigator of the LINEAR program and associate head of the aerospace division at Lincoln laboratory, said it is now known that the asteroid, designated as "2003QQ47," could never reach Earth.

   "It was an unfortunate process of release of information to the public. We send the information to the Minor Planets Center at the Harvard Smithsonian in Cambridge , Mass. If it is a known object, the center will put the observation on its catalogues.

   "If it is not a known object, they give a discovery designation. If it's interesting, observers worldwide take follow up data on the object. LINEAR searches broad areas of the sky and other astronomers follow up the data after about six days of the orbit being determined. They are propagating a very long time into the future. The error bubble ­­ our understanding of where it's going to be -- includes the Earth. The error bubble is huge. There was an indication of a potential collision. This is exactly what happened in this case.

   "Each day we get new data and the error bubble collapses, as has happened in every one of these cases in the past. As we get more data, all of a sudden the potential for a collision is infinitesimally small. The 2014 collision is now zero probability," said Stokes.

   The LINEAR project, at Stallion Range, about 25 miles from Socorro, is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory program funded by the U.S. Air Force and NASA. The goal of the LINEAR program is to demonstrate the application of technology originally developed for the surveillance of earth orbiting satellites, to the problem of detecting and cataloging Near Earth Asteroids (also referred to as Near Earth Objects, or NEOs) that threaten the Earth.

   Stokes said that while all the discoveries so far have been harmless to Earth, "it is still well worthwhile going and finding all of these objects that could potentially come to the Earth. There have been over 11,000 potential objects discovered that are one-kilometer and larger that would have been near earth asteroids. Of those, LINEAR has found more than half. The statistics for collision is that it is unlikely that we will find something over the next 100 years. But it is worthwhile having modest resources to go out and find these."

   The LINEAR program uses a pair of GEODSS telescopes at Lincoln Laboratory's Test Site. The telescopes are equipped with Lincoln Laboratory developed CCD electro-optical detectors and collected data is processed on site to generate observations. Observations are then sent to the main Lincoln Laboratory site on Hanscom AFB in Lexington, Mass. where they are linked from night to night.

   LINEAR is responsible for 70 percent of the worldwide discovery stream of asteroids and comets, said Stokes, more than half of all known near Earth asteroids and well over 100 comets. "It has been a very significant contribution to the research of comet science. Because of their early discovery, astronomers now have the time to schedule the instruments to see inbound comets. Previously, when comets were only found with a tail, and much closer, observers could only observe them on their outbound orbit."

   "LINEAR Discovers the majority of comets these days," said Stokes.

   "The way we operate is a little different," said Stokes when asked the name of the new asteroid. "Standard asteroids surveys are personality driven. Often they are named after the Ph.D. astronomer at the telescope. We have added an industrial model to that. The only way to go out and discover that amount of sky is to observe all night every night. We have a team of about 12 people that runs those telescopes that make this process work. It's not personalized. All the discovered comets have the words LINEAR in their designation. It is very much a team effort. Not a single-person kind of thing."