The NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) has reached a significant milestone by becoming the first survey capable of scanning the entire dark sky every 24 hours for near-Earth objects (NEOs) that may threaten Earth. Operated by the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy, the system now includes four telescopes, with the addition of two observatories in South Africa and Chile.
Kelly Fast, Near-Earth Object Observations Program Manager for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, emphasized the importance of early detection: "An important part of planetary defense is finding asteroids before they find us." The ATLAS system, which started with two telescopes in Hawaiʻi in 2017, has expanded its observational capabilities significantly.
Each telescope can image a sky area 100 times larger than the full moon in a single exposure. The new telescopes, located at Sutherland Observing Station in South Africa and El Sauce Observatory in Chile, allow ATLAS to observe the night sky even when it is daytime in Hawaiʻi.
So far, ATLAS has discovered over 700 near-Earth asteroids and 66 comets. Notably, it identified its first NEO from South Africa, 2022 BK, a 100-meter asteroid that poses no threat to Earth. This expansion coincides with NASA's increasing efforts in planetary defense, including the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which aims to test technology for deflecting potentially hazardous asteroids.
NASA is also advancing the Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope (NEO Surveyor) to enhance its ability to discover and characterize hazardous NEOs. Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA, stated, "Our goal is to find any possible impact years to decades in advance so it can be deflected with technology we already have, like DART." The ATLAS system plays a crucial role in these efforts, enhancing global capabilities in planetary defense.