Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

BartyDeCanter t1_itmn3ev wrote

I'm not a rocket engineer, but I did work for several years as an astronomer at a now defunct observatory (pre-SST LINEAR) that was working on NEO research. Good news! We've well cataloged almost all of the NEOs large enough to cause an extinction level impact and are doing a good job of cataloging this that would "merely" cause widespread devastation. However, for objects that could cause local or regional destruction, we really need something like this in orbit. It's like insurance, you hope to never need it but you'll be glad if you do.

Edit: Missing "almost"

27

HardShelledTurt t1_itndv2v wrote

How can you be sure they're all catalogued? You don't know what you don't know

11

BartyDeCanter t1_itney45 wrote

That is, of course, an excellent point. What we do have is estimates from a few different methods (mass distribution, perturbation analysis, discovery curve, etc) and they are converging on <1000 NEOs larger than 1km. Here's a nice, though slightly outdated, graphic: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/gallery/neowise/pia14734.html

And a recent paper giving an estimate of 940+-10. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103521001342

&#x200B;

Edit: Article link

12

Xbxbxb123 t1_itnkmx3 wrote

The simple answer is that you can estimate how many there are total by how many you've found and how hard you had to look.

5