Astronomy:Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System

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Short description: Robotic astronomical survey and early warning system
Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System
Observatory codeT05 (ATLAS-HKO)
T08 (ATLAS-MLO)
[edit on Wikidata]

The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) is a robotic astronomical survey and early warning system optimized for detecting smaller near-Earth objects a few weeks to days before they impact Earth.

Funded by NASA, and developed and operated by the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, the system currently has four 0.5-meter telescopes. Two are located 160 km apart in the Hawaiian islands, at Haleakala (ATLAS-HKO, Observatory code T05) and Mauna Loa (ATLAS-MLO, Observatory code T08) observatories, one is located at the Sutherland Observatory (ATLAS–SAAO, Observatory code M22) in South Africa , and one is at the El Sauce Observatory in Rio Hurtado (Chile ) (Observatory code W68).

ATLAS began observations in 2015 with one telescope at Haleakala, and a two-Hawaii-telescopes version became operational in 2017. The project then obtained NASA funding for two additional telescopes in the Southern hemisphere, which became operational in early 2022.[1] Each telescope surveys one quarter of the whole observable sky four times per clear night,[2] and the addition of the two southern telescopes improved ATLAS's four-fold coverage of the observable sky from every two clear nights to nightly, as well as filled its previous blind spot in the far southern sky.[3]

Context

Further information: Astronomy:Impact event and Astronomy:Meteor air burst

Major astronomical impact events have significantly shaped Earth's history, having been implicated in the formation of the Earth–Moon system, the origin of water on Earth, the evolutionary history of life, and several mass extinctions. Notable prehistorical impact events include the Chicxulub impact by a 10 kilometer asteroid 66 million years ago, believed to be the cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event which eliminated all non-avian dinosaurs[4] and three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth.[5][6] The 37 million years old asteroid impact that excavated the Mistastin crater generated temperatures exceeding 2,370 °C, the highest known to have naturally occurred on the surface of the Earth.[7]

Throughout recorded history, hundreds of Earth impacts (and meteor air bursts) have been reported, with some very small fraction causing deaths, injuries, property damage, or other significant localised consequences.[8] Stony asteroids with a diameter of 4 meters (13 ft) enter Earth's atmosphere approximately once per year.[9] Asteroids with a diameter of 7 meters enter the atmosphere about every 5 years, with as much kinetic energy as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (approximately 16 kilotons of TNT). Their air burst dissipates about one third of that kinetic energy, or 5 kilotons.[9] These relatively small asteroids ordinarily explode in the upper atmosphere and most or all of their solids are vaporized.[10] Asteroids with a diameter of 20 m (66 ft) strike Earth approximately twice every century. One of the best-known impacts in historical times is the 50 meter 1908 Tunguska event, which most likely caused no injuries but which leveled several thousand square kilometers of forest in a very sparsely populated part of Siberia, Russia. A similar impact over a more populous region would have caused locally catastrophic damage.[11] The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor event is the only known impact in historical times to have resulted in a large number of injuries, with the potential exception of the possibly highly deadly but poorly documented 1490 Qingyang event in China. The approximately 20 meter Chelyabinsk meteor is the largest recorded object to have impacted a continent of the Earth since the Tunguska event.

Future impacts are bound to occur, with much higher odds for smaller regionally damaging asteroids than for larger globally damaging ones. The 2018 final book of physicist Stephen Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, considers a large asteroid collision the biggest threat to our planet.[12][13][14] In April 2018, the B612 Foundation reported "It's a 100 per cent certainty we'll be hit [by a devastating asteroid], but we're not 100 per cent sure when."[15] In June 2018, the US National Science and Technology Council warned that America is unprepared for an asteroid impact event, and has developed and released the "National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy Action Plan" to better prepare.[16][17][18][19][20]

Annually discovered NEAs by survey since 1995
Large NEAs (at least 1 km in diameter) discovered each year

Larger asteroids can be detected even while far from the Earth, and their orbits can therefore be very precisely determined many years in advance of any close approach. Thanks largely to Spaceguard cataloging initiated by a 2005 mandate of the United States Congress to NASA,[21] the inventory of the approximately one thousand Near Earth Objects with diameters above 1 kilometer was for instance 97% complete in 2017.[22] The slowly improving completeness for 140 meter objects is estimated to be around 40%, and the planned NEO Surveyor NASA mission is expected to identify almost all of them by 2040. Any impact by one of these known asteroids would be predicted decades to centuries in advance, long enough to consider deflecting them away from Earth. None of them will impact Earth for at least the next century, and we are therefore largely safe from globally civilisation-ending kilometer-size impacts for at least the mid-term future. Regionally catastrophic impacts by asteroids a few hundred meters across cannot, on the other hand, be excluded at this point in time.

Sub-140m impacting asteroids would not cause large scale damage but are still locally catastrophic. They are much more common and they can, by contrast to larger ones, only be detected when they come very close to the Earth. In most cases this only happens during their final approach. Those impacts therefore will always need a constant watch and they typically cannot be identified earlier than a few weeks in advance, far too late for interception. According to expert testimony in the United States Congress in 2013, NASA would at that time have required at least five years of preparation before a mission to intercept an asteroid could be launched.[23] This time could be much reduced by pre-planning a ready to launch mission, but the post-launch years needed to first meet the asteroid and then to slowly deflect it by at least the diameter of the Earth would be extremely hard to compress.

Naming

The Last Alert part of the ATLAS name acknowledges that the system will find smaller asteroids years too late for potential deflection but would provide the days or weeks of warning needed to evacuate and otherwise prepare a target area. According to ATLAS project lead John Tonry, "that's enough time to evacuate the area of people, take measures to protect buildings and other infrastructure, and be alert to a tsunami danger generated by ocean impacts".[24] Most of the more than 1 billion rubles damage[25] and of the 1500 injuries[26] caused by the 17-m Chelyabinsk meteor impact in 2013 were from window glass broken by its shock wave.[27] With even a few hours advance warning, those losses and injuries could have been much reduced by actions as simple as propping all windows open before the impact and staying away from them.

Overview

The ATLAS project was developed at the University of Hawaii with US$5 million initial funding from NASA, and its first element was deployed on Haleakala in 2015.[28] This first telescope became fully operational at the end of 2015, and the second one on Mauna Loa in March 2017. Replacement of the initially substandard Schmidt corrector plates of both telescopes in June 2017 brought their image quality closer to its nominal 2 pixels (3.8") width and consequently improved their sensitivity by one magnitude.[29] In August 2018, the project obtained US$3.8 million of additional NASA funding to install two telescopes in the Southern hemisphere. One is now hosted by the South African Astronomical Observatory and the other at the El Sauce Observatory in Chile. Both started operating in early 2022.[1][30][31] This geographical expansion of ATLAS provides visibility of the far Southern sky, more continuous coverage, better resilience to bad weather, and additional information on the asteroid orbit from the parallax effect.[32] The full ATLAS concept consists of eight telescopes, spread over the globe for 24h/24h coverage of the full night sky.

As long as their radiant is not too close to the Sun, the automated system provides a one-week warning for a 45 metres (150 ft) diameter asteroid, and a three-week warning for a 120 m (390 ft) one.[28] By comparison, the February 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor impact was from an object estimated at 17 m (60 ft) diameter. Its arrival direction happened to be close to the Sun[33] and it therefore was in the blind spot of any Earth-based visible light warning system. A similar object arriving from a dark direction would now be detected by ATLAS a few days in advance.[34]

As a by-product of its main design goal, ATLAS can identify any moderately bright variable or moving object in the night sky. It therefore also looks for variable stars,[35] supernovae,[28] dwarf planets, comets, and non-impacting asteroids.[36]

Design and operation

The full ATLAS concept consists of eight 50-centimeter diameter f/2 Wright-Schmidt telescopes, spread over the globe for full-night-sky and 24h/24h coverage, and each fitted with a 110 Megapixel CCD array camera. The current system consists of four such telescopes: ATLAS1 and ATLAS2 operate 160 km apart on the Haleakala and Mauna Loa volcanoes in the Hawaiian Islands, the third telescope is at the South African Astronomical Observatory and the fourth in Chile.[37][38][39][1] These telescopes are notable for their large 7.4° field of view — about 15 times the diameter of the full moon — of which their 10 500 × 10 500 CCD camera images the central 5.4° × 5.4°. This system can image the whole night sky visible from a single location with about 1000 separate telescope pointings. At 30 seconds per exposure plus 10 seconds for simultaneously reading out the camera and repointing the telescope, each ATLAS unit can therefore scan the whole visible sky a little over once each night, with a median completeness limit at apparent magnitude 19.[40] Since the mission of ATLAS is to identify moving objects, each telescope actually observes one quarter of the sky four times in a night at approximately 15-minute intervals. In perfect conditions, the four telescopes together can therefore observe the full night sky every night, but bad weather at one or the other site, occasional technical problems, and even the odd volcanic eruption of Mauna Loa,[41] all reduce the effective coverage rate. The four exposures by a telescope allow to automatically link multiple observations of an asteroid into a preliminary orbit, with some robustness to the loss of one observation to overlap between the asteroid and a bright star, and to then predict its approximate position on subsequent nights for follow-up. Apparent magnitude 19 is classified as "respectably but not extremely faint", and is approximately 100 000 times too faint to be seen with a naked eye from a very dark location. It is equivalent to the light of a match flame in New York viewed from San Francisco. ATLAS therefore scans the visible sky in much less depth, but much more quickly, than larger surveying telescope arrays such as University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS. Pan-STARRS goes approximately 100 times deeper, but needs weeks instead of a quarter of a night to scan the whole sky just once.[28] This makes ATLAS better suited to finding small asteroids which can only be seen during the just few days that they brighten dramatically when they happen to pass very close to the Earth.

NASA's Near Earth Observation Program initially provided a US$5 million grant, with $3.5 million covering the first three years of design, construction and software development, and the balance of the grant to fund the systems operation for two years following its entry into full operational service in late 2015.[42] Further NASA grants funded continued operation of ATLAS[43] and the construction of the two Southern telescopes.[31]

Now complete, the new ATLAS sites have filled in the previous lack of coverage in the Southern hemisphere (see Asteroid impact prediction). Sited around 120° (8 hours) east of existing surveys, the ATLAS South Africa telescope (and the planned NEOSTEL in Sicily) also provide warnings during the Hawaiian/Chilean and California daytimes. This mostly matters for small asteroids which become bright enough for detection for at most a day or two.

Discoveries

  • SN 2018cow, a relatively bright supernova on 2018-06-16.
  • 2018 AH, largest asteroid to pass so close to Earth since 1971 on 2018-01-02.
  • A106fgF, a 2–5 m asteroid which either passed extremely close or impacted Earth on 2018-01-22.
  • 2018 RC, near earth asteroid on 2018-09-03 (notable because it was discovered more than a day prior to closest approach on 2018-09-09).[44]
  • A10bMLz, unknown space debris, so-called "empty trash bag object" on 2019-01-25.[45]
  • 2019 MO, an approximately 4 m asteroid which impacted the Caribbean Sea South of Puerto Rico in June 2019[46]
  • C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS), comet
  • 2020 VT4, a 5–10 m object which passed closer to Earth than any other known near-miss asteroid
  • Photographed ejecta from NASA's DART impact on asteroid Dimorphos[47]
  • AT2022aedm explosion in an elliptical host galaxy[48]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Expanded UH asteroid tracking system can monitor entire sky". University of Hawaii. 27 January 2022. https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2022/01/27/expanded-uh-asteroid-tracking-monitor-entire-sky/. 
  2. ↑ Tonry (28 March 2018). "ATLAS: A High-Cadence All-Sky Survey System". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 130 (988): 064505. doi:10.1088/1538-3873/aabadf. Bibcode: 2018PASP..130f4505T.  Accessed 2018-04-14.
  3. ↑ Watson, Traci (2018-08-14). "Project that spots city-killing asteroids expands to Southern Hemisphere". Nature (Springer Nature Limited). doi:10.1038/d41586-018-05969-2. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05969-2. Retrieved 17 October 2018. 
  4. ↑ Becker, Luann (2002). "Repeated Blows". Scientific American 286 (3): 76–83. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0302-76. PMID 11857903. Bibcode: 2002SciAm.286c..76B. 
  5. ↑ "International Chronostratigraphic Chart". International Commission on Stratigraphy. 2015. http://www.stratigraphy.org/index.php/ics-chart-timescale. 
  6. ↑ Fortey, Richard (1999). Life: A natural history of the first four billion years of life on Earth. Vintage. pp. 238–260. ISBN 978-0-375-70261-7. 
  7. ↑ Dvorsky, George (2017-09-17). "The Hottest Known Temperature On Earth Was Caused By An Ancient Asteroid Strike" (in en). Gizmodo. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/09/the-hottest-known-temperature-on-earth-was-caused-by-an-ancient-asteroid-strike/. 
  8. ↑ Lewis, John S. (1996), Rain of Iron and Ice, Helix Books (Addison-Wesley), p. 236, ISBN 978-0-201-48950-7, https://archive.org/details/rainofironicever00lewi/page/236 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Earth Impact Effects Program". Imperial College London / Purdue University. 2010. http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/.  (solution using 2600kg/m^3, 17km/s, 45 degrees)
  10. ↑ Clark R. Chapman & David Morrison; Morrison (January 6, 1994), "Impacts on the Earth by asteroids and comets: assessing the hazard", Nature 367 (6458): 33–40, doi:10.1038/367033a0, Bibcode: 1994Natur.367...33C, https://zenodo.org/record/1233151 
  11. ↑ Yau, K., Weissman, P., & Yeomans, D. Meteorite Falls In China And Some Related Human Casualty Events, Meteoritics, Vol. 29, No. 6, pp. 864–871, ISSN 0026-1114, bibliographic code: 1994Metic..29..864Y.
  12. ↑ Stanley-Becker, Isaac (15 October 2018). "Stephen Hawking feared race of 'superhumans' able to manipulate their own DNA". The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/10/15/stephen-hawking-feared-race-of-superhumans-able-to-manipulate-their-own-dna/. 
  13. ↑ Haldevang, Max de (14 October 2018). "Stephen Hawking left us bold predictions on AI, superhumans, and aliens". Quartz. https://qz.com/1423685/stephen-hawking-says-superhumans-will-take-over-ai-is-a-threat-and-humans-will-conquer-space/. 
  14. ↑ Bogdan, Dennis (18 June 2018). "Comment - Better Way To Avoid Devastating Asteroids Needed?". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/science/asteroids-nasa-nathan-myhrvold.html#permid=27500228:27506217. 
  15. ↑ Homer, Aaron (28 April 2018). "Earth Will Be Hit By An Asteroid With 100 Percent Certainty, Says Space-Watching Group B612 - The group of scientists and former astronauts is devoted to defending the planet from a space apocalypse.". Inquisitr. https://www.inquisitr.com/4881237/earth-will-be-hit-by-an-asteroid-with-100-percent-certainty-says-space-watching-group-b612/. 
  16. ↑ Staff (21 June 2018). "National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy Action Plan". whitehouse.gov. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/National-Near-Earth-Object-Preparedness-Strategy-and-Action-Plan-23-pages-1MB.pdf. 
  17. ↑ Mandelbaum, Ryan F. (21 June 2018). "America Isn't Ready to Handle a Catastrophic Asteroid Impact, New Report Warns". Gizmodo. https://gizmodo.com/america-isnt-ready-to-handle-a-catastrophic-asteroid-im-1827014709. 
  18. ↑ Myhrvold, Nathan (22 May 2018). "An empirical examination of WISE/NEOWISE asteroid analysis and results". Icarus 314: 64–97. doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2018.05.004. Bibcode: 2018Icar..314...64M. 
  19. ↑ Chang, Kenneth (14 June 2018). "Asteroids and Adversaries: Challenging What NASA Knows About Space Rocks - Two years ago, NASA dismissed and mocked an amateur's criticisms of its asteroids database. Now Nathan Myhrvold is back, and his papers have passed peer review.". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/science/asteroids-nasa-nathan-myhrvold.html. 
  20. ↑ Chang, Kenneth (14 June 2018). "Asteroids and Adversaries: Challenging What NASA Knows About Space Rocks - Relevant Comments". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/science/asteroids-nasa-nathan-myhrvold.html#permid=27500228:27506217. 
  21. ↑ Staff (21 June 2018). "George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey ActNational Near-Earth Object". https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr1022. 
  22. ↑ Matt Williams (October 20, 2017). "Good News Everyone! There are Fewer Deadly Undiscovered Asteroids than we Thought". Universe Today. https://www.universetoday.com/137583/good-news-everyone-less-deadly-undiscovered-asteroids-thought/. 
  23. ↑ U.S.Congress (19 March 2013). "Threats From Space: a Review of U.S. Government Efforts to Track and mitigate Asteroids and Meteors (Part I and Part II) – Hearing Before the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology House of Representatives One Hundred Thirteenth Congress First Session". United States Congress. p. 147. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113hhrg80552/pdf/CHRG-113hhrg80552.pdf. 
  24. ↑ Clark, Stuart (20 June 2017). "Asteroids and how to deflect them". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2013/feb/18/asteroids-how-deflect-dangerous. 
  25. ↑ "Error: no |title= specified when using {{Cite web}}" (in ru). Lenta.ru. 15 February 2013. http://lenta.ru/news/2013/02/15/damage/. 
  26. ↑ "Error: no |title= specified when using {{Cite web}}" (in ru). РосБизнесКонсалтинг [RBC]. 18 February 2013. http://top.rbc.ru/incidents/18/02/2013/845595.shtml. 
  27. ↑ Heintz, Jim; Isachenkov, Vladimir (15 February 2013). "Meteor explodes over Russia's Ural Mountains; 1,100 injured as shock wave blasts out windows". The Associated Press. Postmedia Network Inc. http://www.canada.com/news/Meteor+explodes+over+Russia+Ural+Mountains+injured+shock+wave+blasts+windows/7968297/story.html. "Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Vladimir Purgin said many of the injured were cut as they flocked to windows to see what caused the intense flash of light, which was momentarily brighter than the sun." 
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 28.3 University of Hawaii at Manoa's Institute for Astronomy (18 February 2013). "ATLAS: The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System". Astronomy Magazine. http://www.astronomy.com/News-Observing/News/2013/02/ATLAS%20-%20The%20Asteroid%20Terrestrial-Impact%20Last%20Alert%20System.aspx. 
  29. ↑ Henry Weiland (18 February 2013). "New Schmidt Correctors Installed!". http://blog.fallingstar.com/index.php/2017/06/20/new-schmidt-correctors-installed/. 
  30. ↑ "SAAO to contribute to the global effort to detect Near Earth Objects."
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 Project that spots city-killing asteroids expands to Southern Hemisphere.
  32. ↑ Atlas: How it works. Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System.
  33. ↑ Zuluaga, Jorge I.; Ferrin, Ignacio (2013). "A preliminary reconstruction of the orbit of the Chelyabinsk Meteoroid". arXiv:1302.5377 [astro-ph.EP]. We use this result to classify the meteoroid among the near Earth asteroid families finding that the parent body belonged to the Apollo asteroids.
  34. ↑ [1] Breakthrough: UH team successfully locates incoming asteroid
  35. ↑ Heinze, A. N; Tonry, John L; Denneau, Larry; Flewelling, Heather; Stalder, Brian; Rest, Armin; Smith, Ken W; Smartt, Stephen J et al. (2018). "A First Catalog of Variable Stars Measured by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS)". The Astronomical Journal 156 (5): 241. doi:10.3847/1538-3881/aae47f. Bibcode: 2018AJ....156..241H. 
  36. ↑ [2] 'ATLAS Solar System Catalog V1'
  37. ↑ ATLAS Telescope 2 Installed on Mauna Loa, Ari Heinze [3] Retrieved April 7, 2017.
  38. ↑ Our SAAO colleagues have completed the assembly of the ATLAS dome! [4] Retrieved December 14, 2020.
  39. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2nB46hUuMk feature=youtu.be
  40. ↑ ATLAS Technical Specifications
  41. ↑ [5]
  42. ↑ Oliver, Chris. ATLAS Project Funded by NASA, Nā Kilo Hōkū (newsletter), Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, No. 46, 2013, p. 1. Retrieved August 2, 2014.
  43. ↑ ATLAS Update #18: 2017 March [6] Retrieved April 14, 2017.
  44. ↑ Minor Planet Center records for 2018 RC
  45. ↑ "Mysterious Object Spotted In Earth's Atmosphere" (in en). 30 January 2019. https://www.iflscience.com/space/a-strange-empty-trash-bag-object-has-been-spotted-in-earths-orbit/. 
  46. ↑ "Breakthrough: UH team successfully locates incoming asteroid". http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/ATLAS_2019MO/. 
  47. ↑ ATLAS twitter feed
  48. ↑ Nicholl, M.; Srivastav, S.; Fulton, M. D.; Gomez, S.; Huber, M. E.; Oates, S. R.; Ramsden, P.; Rhodes, L. et al. (September 2023). "AT 2022aedm and a New Class of Luminous, Fast-cooling Transients in Elliptical Galaxies" (in en). The Astrophysical Journal Letters 954 (1): L28. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/acf0ba. ISSN 2041-8205. Bibcode: 2023ApJ...954L..28N. 

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