[meteorite-list] Ed Weiler's plan to flood the meteorite market

From: E.P. Grondine <epgrondine_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2011 08:52:25 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <360995.56204.qm_at_web36906.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi Everyone -

Nine years ago I wrote about NASA's Ed Weiler's plan to flood the meteorite market by putting too many meteorites on it all at once:

http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/ce091702.html

And lo, it is coming to pass. From Alain on the mpml mailing list:

To all who care to read what follows -

I believe it is very academic (meaning not too efficient) to talk at length
about statistics, the work needs to be done. I don't share Ed's statistics,
but when the next one, even a small one, will fall, it will be too late to
talk about statistics.

Right now detection work is only done efficiently by NASA supported programs. It is a real shame that no other country in the world has moved a little finger in this respect (decisions are taken in the academic circles, therefore are not taken). The only thing I can say, apart from thanking NASA for its current effort is that I hope they will be able to do even more. Hopefully they understand quickly that time share telescopes are not the way to go.

When PS1 brags about finding 19 NEO in one night, this is not so much higher than the current "records" obtained the 1.5m Catalina. I was there with Andrea Boattini last September, and they had detected 16 in the previous night (and didn't make a press release for the occasion :)). This is a 1.5m telescope in a not so exceptional site, with a 16 megapixels camera. PS1 is a 1.8m telescope with a 1.4 Gigapixel camera, it should find hundreds of NEOs per night, and in fact has to, if it wants to detect the number which has to be detected.

That tells a lot about the very low efficiency of PS1 when it comes to asteroid detection. A full time PS1 would become interesting. A 2 nights per month is basically worthless to attack the problem of "finding all
140m asteroids in a short time". So far this year, Catalina has discovered 174 NEOs, PS1 31... (http://neo.jpl. nasa.gov/ stats/ ) If you compare the theoritical capacity of each telescope, PS1 is around one thousandth of what it could be doing.

The same will happen with the Large Time Share Telescope or whatever its
name. LTST, LSST, you name it. Hopefully NASA can find the funds to get a
large full time asteroid survey telescope instead of falling in the time
share scam.

There is an estimated 25000 140m asteroids to be discovered. You'd need to
find 2500 per year in ten years. That means at the beginning of the survey
to discover (and follow up) about 10 such objects per night, every night
(full moon and cloudy nights included). This is what is needed, and it won't be done observing twice per month.

Alain

(It is sad that Alain did not realize that PS1 was funded by the Air Force)

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas


      
Received on Mon 21 Mar 2011 11:52:25 AM PDT