Mission
The NEO Observations Program (NEOO) is a result of a 1998 congressional directive to NASA to begin a program to identify 1 kilometer or larger objects to around 90 percent confidence level or better. The Catalina Sky Survey (CSS, in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson) and its affiliated Siding Spring Survey (SSS) are carrying out searches for NEOs, contributing to the Congressionally mandated goal.
In addition to identifying impact risks, there are other benefits to this project. For example, humans can improve the known population distribution in the main belt, find the cometary distribution at larger perihelion distances, determining the distribution of NEOs as a product of collisional history and transport to the inner solar system, and identifying potential targets for flight projects.
Read more about this topic: Catalina Sky Survey
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“We can come up with a working definition of life, which is what we did for the Viking mission to Mars. We said we could think in terms of a large molecule made up of carbon compounds that can replicate, or make copies of itself, and metabolize food and energy. So that’s the thought: macrocolecule, metabolism, replication.”
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—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)