[meteorite-list] NASA's WISE Eye Spies Near-Earth Asteroid (2010 AB78)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:55:13 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201001252355.o0PNtDpX015008_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-028

NASA's WISE Eye Spies Near-Earth Asteroid
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
January 25, 2010

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE,
has spotted its first never-before-seen near-Earth asteroid, the first
of hundreds it is expected to find during its mission to map the whole
sky in infrared light. There is no danger of the newly discovered
asteroid hitting Earth.

The near-Earth object, designated 2010 AB78, was discovered by WISE Jan.
12. The mission's sophisticated software picked out the moving object
against a background of stationary stars. As WISE circled Earth,
scanning the sky above, it observed the asteroid several times during a
period of one-and-a-half days before the object moved beyond its view.
Researchers then used the University of Hawaii's 2.2-meter (88-inch)
visible-light telescope near the summit of Mauna Kea to follow up and
confirm the discovery.

The asteroid is currently about 158 million kilometers (98 million
miles) from Earth. It is estimated to be roughly 1 kilometer (0.6 miles)
in diameter and circles the sun in an elliptical orbit tilted to the
plane of our solar system. The object comes as close to the sun as
Earth, but because of its tilted orbit, it will not pass very close to
Earth for many centuries. This asteroid does not pose any foreseeable
impact threat to Earth, but scientists will continue to monitor it.

Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets with orbits that pass
relatively close to Earth's path around the sun. In extremely rare cases
of an impact, the objects may cause damage to Earth's surface. An
asteroid about 10 kilometers (6 miles) wide is thought to have plunged
into our planet 65 million years ago, triggering a global disaster and
killing off the dinosaurs.

Additional asteroid and comet detections will continue to come from
WISE. The observations will be automatically sent to the clearinghouse
for solar system bodies, the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass.,
for comparison against the known catalog of solar system objects. A
community of professional and amateur astronomers will provide follow-up
observations, establishing firm orbits for the previously unseen objects.

"This is just the beginning," said Ned Wright, the mission's principal
investigator from UCLA. "We've got a fire hose of data pouring down from
space."

On Jan. 14, the WISE mission began its official survey of the entire sky
in infrared light, one month after it rocketed into a polar orbit around
Earth from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. By casting a wide
net, the mission will catch all sorts of cosmic objects, from asteroids
in our own solar system to galaxies billions of light-years away. Its
data will serve as a cosmic treasure map, pointing astronomers and
telescopes, such as NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the upcoming
James Webb Space Telescope, to the most interesting finds.

WISE is expected to find about 100,000 previously unknown asteroids in
our main asteroid belt, a rocky ring of debris between the orbits of
Mars and Jupiter. It will also spot hundreds of previously unseen
near-Earth objects.

By observing infrared light, WISE will reveal the darkest members of the
near-Earth object population -- those that don't reflect much visible
light. The mission will contribute important information about asteroid
and comet sizes. Visible-light estimates of an asteroid's size can be
deceiving, because a small, light-colored space rock can look the same
as a big, dark one. In infrared, however, a big dark rock will give off
more of a thermal, or infrared glow, and reveal its true size. This size
information will give researchers a better estimate of how often Earth
can expect potentially devastating impacts.

"We are thrilled to have found our first new near-Earth object," said
Amy Mainzer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Mainzer is the principal investigator of NEOWISE, a program to mine the
collected WISE data for new solar system objects. "Many programs are
searching for near-Earth objects using visible light, but some asteroids
are dark, like pavement, and don't reflect a lot of sunlight. But like a
parking lot, the dark objects heat up and emit infrared light that WISE
can see."

"It is great to receive the first of many anticipated near-Earth object
discoveries by the WISE system," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's
Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL. "Analysis of the WISE data will
go a long way toward understanding the true nature of this population."

JPL manages the WISE mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The
mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program
managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science
instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and
the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.,
Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The ground-based
observations are partly supported by the National Science Foundation.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise,
http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin at jpl.nasa.gov

2010-028
Received on Mon 25 Jan 2010 06:55:13 PM PST