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Near Earth Object (NEO) Searches
By Edna DeVore
SETI Institute Director of Education and Outreach
posted: 07:00 am ET
11 July 2002
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Headline: Near Earth Object (NEO) Searches Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are being discovered systematically in organized search programs. These groups conduct comprehensive sky surveys, observations to confirm others' discoveries, and analysis of archived data for pre-discovery images. The accuracy of orbital predictions depends upon both repeated observations to confirm discovery, and observations separated in time. Most of the active discovery projects are in the USA, but there is a worldwide network of observers looking for the NEOs. At the direction of Congress, NASA funds a Near Earth Object search program, and JPL runs NASA's NEO Office. The goal of the NASA program is to discover at least 90 percent of all NEOs that are larger than 1 km (0.6 mile) in diameter within 10 years. Astronomers estimate that there are at least 1000 NEOs larger than 1 km in size. There are several northern hemisphere NEO observatories, but only one planned in the southern hemisphere so far -- in Siding Spring, Australia. Other northern hemisphere countries have joined the search: Japan, China, Sweden, Italy, Germany, and the Czech Republic. But more coverage is needed from the southern half of the planet to find the NEO's not visible from North America, Europe, and Asia. For an up-to-date plot of NEO positions, go to
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/InnerPlot2.html To learn more about NEO searches visit the NEO Program Office (NASA/JPL)
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ LONEOS in Arizona, USA
http://asteroid.lowell.edu/asteroid/loneos/loneos.html LINEAR in New Mexico, USA
http://www.ll.mit.edu/LINEAR/ SPACEWATCH in Arizona, USA
http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/spacewatch/ NEAT Hawaii and California, USA
http://neat.jpl.nasa.gov/ Catalina Sky Survey Arizona USA, and Australia
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/csssouth.html (Southern Hemisphere) SCAP in China
http://vega.bac.pku.edu.cn/~zj/scap/scap.html JSGA in Japan
http://www.spaceguard.or.jp/ ADAS in Italy
http://planet.pd.astro.it/planets/adas/index.html KLET Observatory in Czech Republic
http://www.klet.cz/ Ondrejov in Czech Republic
http://sunkl.asu.cas.cz/~ppravec/ UDAS in Sweden
http://earn.dlr.de/udas/ ANEOPP multi-national project to look at archived data
http://www.arcetri.astro.it/science/aneopp/
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