Projects To Minimize The Threat
Several surveys have undertaken "Spaceguard" activities (an umbrella term), including Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR), Spacewatch, Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT), Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search (LONEOS), Catalina Sky Survey, Campo Imperatore Near-Earth Objects Survey (CINEOS), Japanese Spaceguard Association, and Asiago-DLR Asteroid Survey. In 1998, the United States Congress mandated the Spaceguard Survey – detection of 90% of near-earth asteroids over 1 km diameter (which threaten global devastation) by 2008. This could be extended by the George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey Act, which calls for NASA to detect 90 percent of NEOs with diameters of 140 meters or greater by 2020.
As of 2011, 911 of the largest (>1 km diameter) near-Earth asteroids have been found, with an estimate of 70 yet to be found.
On April 25, 2012, the Ecuadorian Space Agency announced that due a technological change in the video camera of its first satellite it will be adding a 3rd mission, which is to help organizations and individuals around the world monitor for small, most dangerous near-earth objects directly from orbit in real time and help fine tune the catalog of orbital debris by injecting the live video signal of the satellite into the Internet, thus turning the NEE-01 Pegasus in the first online, real-time video orbital sentry.
Read more about this topic: Near-Earth Object
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