Asteroid impact prediction

Common card · No. 433559

Asteroid impact prediction is the prediction of the dates and times of asteroids impacting Earth, along with the locations and severities of the impacts. The process of impact prediction follows three major steps: Discovery of an asteroid and initial assessment of its orbit which is generally based on a short observation arc of less than 2 weeks. Follow-up observations to improve the orbit determination Calculating if, when and where the orbit may intersect with Earth at some point in the future. The usual purpose of predicting an impact is to direct an appropriate response. Most asteroids are discovered by a camera on a telescope with a wide field of view. Image differencing software compares a recent image with earlier ones of the same part of the sky, detecting objects that have moved, brightened, or appeared. Those systems usually obtain a few observations per night, which can be linked up into a very preliminary orbit determination. This predicts approximate positions over the next...

Read on Wikipedia · Image George William Herbert (graphic overlay) / US Government (original map), Public domain