Astronomers usually look at the sky, but on Monday, June 23, the community turned its attention to Washington, DC, as Scientists from Vera C. Rubin Observatory revealed the first images of the telescope. Many waited more than 20 years to see Rubin in action, and its initial findings did not defraud.
Rubin, a joint initiative of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office of the Science of the Department of Energy (DOE), recently made its first 10 hours of test observations. In exactly that short period, the observatory produced brilliant images and discovered more than 2,000 previously unknown asteroids, including seven near-earth asteroids. None of them pose a threat to our planet, but with this richness of new data, the observatory has already proven to be a game exchanger for asteroid hunters working on planetary defense. Making unprecedented fast and detailed surveys of the entire southern sky, Rubin will allow scientists to find and track more space rocks than ever before.
“While this camera system was projected, we all knew it would be amazing at what it delivered, but that surpassed all our expectations,” Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and inventor of the Torrino Scale.
Data on these 2,000 new asteroids went directly to the Little Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union (MPC), the globally recognized organization responsible for cataloging and disseminating data on asteroids, comets and other small heavenly bodies. It plays a vital role in the early detection and monitoring of asteroids that threaten the Earth. The MPC spent years preparing for Rubin’s data flood, crawling its program to process massive amounts of observations. When the first round officially flooded on Monday, it was “nervous and exciting at the same time,” Matthew Payne, MPC director, told Gizmodo.
This was just a taste of the coming. In a few months, Rubin will begin the legacy survey of space and time (LSST), a decade-long, almost continuous survey of the southern sky. This will produce an ultra-country, an ultra-high definite time-lapsed record of the universe. As for asteroids, this means that MPC will receive about 250 million observations a year from LSST, according to Payne. “For us, this is a game exchanger in the total amount of data we receive, because we are currently coming somewhere in the area of 50 to 60 million a year,” he said.
How is Rubin doing it?
Rubin’s remarkable abilities come from its considerable instruments. Equipped with a unique three-mirror telescope design and the Larger digital camera ever builtThis observatory can conduct all kinds of surveys while still detecting very weak objects such as asteroids. This bridges a key gap between existing technologies, Payne explained.
When you hunt spatial rocks, “You have to go as deep as possible,” Peter Veres, MPC, astrophysicist, told Gizmodo. “That’s what the LSST does, and none of the survey telescopes in the world that aim for planetary defense, do so.” During this 10-year survey, Rubin will observe the cosmos on an automatic schedule using its 27.6-foot (8.4-meter) Simonyi-inquiry telescope. Each 30-second exhibition will cover an area about 45 times the size of the full moon. Later, the huge LSST camera will capture wide fields and connect them to create a complete view of the southern sky every three nights. The combination of Rubin’s huge point of view, a short exhibition time and its ability to quickly sweep the sky will give an avalanche of asteroid discoveries, really explained.
In 2005, Congress ordered NASA to build a near-land object (NEO) survey program to detect, track, catalog and characterize the physical characteristics of all near-earth asteroids and comets at least 328 feet (100 meters) in diameter. If one of these objects hit our planet, it would cause mass destruction, which would decide on a continental scale, Payne said. The goal was to find 90% of them by 2020, but current estimates show that NASA only found about 40%, he explained. LSST could help NASA pick up the rhythm. “It will only begin to revolutionize our understanding of this population,” Payne said.
Binzel agrees. “Those objects are there, whether we see them or not,” he said. “Now we will see them, and we can determine that most – if not all – will immediately pass the ground in the coming decades. But the best news is, if an object has our name already, we can find it most likely many, many years – if not decades – before it comes to Earth.”
Theoretically, this would give time to NASA’s planetary defense (PDOC) office (PDOC) to launch a mission intercepting the asteroid. PDOC continues to develop this ability, but in 2022, It launched the mission of dual asteroid redirection (DART)who sent a spaceship on a 10-month long journey to collide with the asteroid moonty dimorphos. The collision successfully changed Dimorphos’ orbital path, showing NASA’s ability to turn a large asteroid away from the ground if given enough time.
NASA is not impressed?
Considering the clear potential of Rubin revolutionizing planetary defense efforts – and the global attention it received – one would expect NASA to sing its praises. That didn’t happen. The agency calmly reassured the launch of the observatory – and in fact it seems to ignore Rubin’s first discoveries altogether.
“It’s a Warp Drive version of finding asteroids,” Keith Cowing, an astrobiologist and former NASA officer who now serves as editor of NASA Watch, told Gizmodo. “You would think the planetary defense people would be in the first row that animates it, saying,” Send me the data! ”
NASA did not share public information about Monday’s event and did not promote the findings of the observatory. When Gizmodo spotted a comment on Rubin’s contributions to planetary science and defense, NASA declined and recommended reaching instead to the observatory.
On Tuesday, June 24th, the Inspector General’s Office of the Agency issued Report on the implementation and management of NASA’s planetary defense strategy. The report only briefly mentions Rubin along with NASA’s next NEO explorer, a space telescope designed to find asteroids that could hit the Earth. “These new observatories are expected to find and track significantly more NEOs than current skills, which is likely to mean a large growth of necessary following observations,” the report states.
NASA’s PDCO and its planetary scientific program will undoubtedly use data collected by the LSST, so what is with the cold shoulder? Cowing thinks it is a symptom of the agency’s internal turmoil. “They are cunning at NASA,” he said. “Their budgets are cut from all sides – they don’t know what the final budget will be, but the White House wants to reduce it – and they have to react to that with everything that is.”
Indeed, President Donald Trump’s budget proposal Cut NASA’s scientific funding by an insignificant 47%, possibly killing more than 40 missions, according to The planetary society. “The only good news is what was not shot,” Cowing said.
He suspects that most NASA employees – including planetary defense personnel – are in survival regime. “What do you do when you just don’t know if you have a job if the person next to you will have a job, or if you need to compete for the same job?” Cowing asked. “That’s the heart of this. It’s just this general bad luck and fear, and people just don’t do the routine, professional, cooperative, college work they would do through agencies and countries.”
Because NASA science collapses, it is unclear whether the agency will have the resources and personnel to benefit full data from Rubin. Although the PDCO is currently leading the world’s planetary defense efforts, this could soon change. Binzel, however, is optimistic. “Great nations make great science,” he said. “I continue to trust that our nation will continue to make great science.
