NEO Surveyor

Oumuamua, the first interstellar object discovered in the solar system, has sparked renewed interest in how to distinguish between natural objects and possible technological signatures. The new study highlights that most of the solar system has not yet been scanned at sufficient resolution to definitively rule out small artificial objects. Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Olmsted and F. Summers / STScI.

Are alien spacecraft hiding in the solar system? New study claims: We've barely looked

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A new study does not claim to have found alien spacecraft, but rather highlights another problem: Most of the solar system has not yet been scanned with sufficient resolution to rule out small artificial objects or technological remnants.
A composite image of the 2019 Geminid meteor shower and a fireball dropped by a meteorite, as captured on camera on the island of La Palma, Spain. Credit: Global Meteor Network

New meteor shower reveals asteroid disintegrating near the sun

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Analysis of millions of meteor observations has identified 282 fragments belonging to a new stream. Researchers believe they originated from a rocky asteroid that weakened due to extreme heating near the Sun.
Asteroids hiding between the orbit of Venus and the Sun. Illustration by Avi Blizovsky via DALEE. The image is for illustrative purposes only and is not a scientific image.

Three 'hidden' asteroids behind Venus highlight the danger of uncharted skies

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While not an immediate threat, the discovery of three rare asteroids in inner orbit around the sun reveals the difficulty of identifying objects that could endanger Earth – and reinforces the need for dedicated telescopes like
From the artist's illustration above, you can get an impression of how nearby objects will look to the NEO Surveyor. Their faint heat signatures will appear as a band of dots that appear in red in this image, for our convenience. That way they will look different from the stars in the background, which are painted blue in the picture. Hunting for near-infrared objects will also allow scientists to determine not only the location and orbit of the objects but also their size. And it is the size that determines the extent of their destruction if they hit the Earth. Image: NASA

NASA approves NEO Surveyor, a space telescope that will scan the sky for dangerous asteroids

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The spacecraft will conduct its survey in infrared. Telescopes on Earth have found most of the nearby objects cataloged so far, but the remaining ones are very difficult to find in visible light
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