Canadian Scientists Disclose Tactics For Asteroid-Hunting Satellite.

Canada's space industry is out to attest again that good quality science can come in a tiny package.

On Thursday, the Canadian Space Bureau as well as the Defence Research Development Canada publicized they are prepared to start the, NEOSSat, otherwise Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite a valise sized telescope capable of spotting space asteroids and tracks high-altitude satellites and space wreckage.

NEOSSat pursue on the achievement of the MOST (Micro variability and Oscillations of Stars) telescope, the 60 kilograms star watching satellite which was launched in 2003 and gets operated on a shoestring budget.

Like its precursor, NEOSSat is small, with a weight of 65 kilograms with a telescope of 15 centimeters opening, smaller than most proletarian astronomers' telescopes.

And like MOST, it will be inexpensive too, pricing $12 million to construct, launch and operate.

Scheduled to launch into space station in 2010, NEOSSat will have two major science tasks: HEOSS (High Earth Orbit Space Surveillance) program, and the NESS (Near Earth Space Surveillance) asteroid search program which will trail satellites and further objects hovering in high orbit around Earth.

First asteroid-track space telescope

Asteroid hunts are more than just scientific inquisitiveness, said University of Calgary lecturer Alan Hildebrand, the director scientist for the NESS program. Even though the orbit bodies, at times called "minor planets," do supply insight into birth of the solar system, there are numerous practical explanations to track the pathway of asteroids, he says.

Perhaps the head concern for a few is the risk of a collision with Earth. Scientists have found proof of asteroid collision with Earth, the most noteworthy being the collision site off the shore of the Yucatan cape in Mexico. The site, obscured by ocean sediments at present, is consideration to be a record of an impact that occurs 65 million years past. Scientists have hypothesized that the collision cleans out the dinosaurs by causing an cataclysm in the planet's weather.

A latest collision occurred 100 years before on June 30, when a tiny object consideration to be a comet with a diameter of fewer than 100 meters — impacted close to the Tunguska area of Siberia in 1908. The resultant shockwave knocks down trees for hundreds of square kilometers and blazed an area about 80 kilometers across.

Whereas NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) program headquarters tracks the pathway of both near-Earth asteroids as well as comets from the earth and has revealed over 5,000, NEOSSat will be the first asteroid-tracking space telescope to function from space, a viewpoint that will permit scientists to track a class of asteroids ground base observatories usually can't see.

These asteroids, identified as Aten-class asteroids, are idiosyncratic since the bulk of their orbital pathway around the sun lies inside Earth's orbit. This make them difficult to mark from earth based observatories, since the ideal time to mark them from the Earth would be during hours of daylight.

NEOSSat, orbiting 700 kilometers over the Earth's atmosphere, won't be mired by day-night limitations, whispered Hildebrand, nor will bad climate affect its view, that allows it to operate 24 hours a daytime, seven days a week. The satellite, orbits from pole to pole each 50 minutes, will send dozens of imagery to the earth every time it passes above Canada.

Since it will be able to take imagery from either face of the Earth, it will besides be able to get an improved read on the distance of asteroids by judging their place in relation to the fixed place of stars, he said.

"We anticipate that we'll locate as lots of Atens in three years as all the earth based telescopes have found previous to," said Hildebrand.

Aten asteroids are significant not only since so little is known about them, but also as their orbits make them separately more likely to have collision with Earth rather than other asteroids.