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In many cases the new asteroid discoveries can then be used to identify other apparitions of the same object that were previously not recognized as being astero
by gammarator 4y ago
In many cases the new asteroid discoveries can then be used to identify other apparitions of the same object that were previously not recognized as being asteroids. That enables further orbit refinement.
- mturmon 4y agoSome colleagues have been involved with the NEO detection effort, so I felt called to mention that problem, which does limit the usefulness of these detections, and illustrates one of the system level problems. From the Wired article in the post I linked: > The THOR team has shown the potential to map out the trajectories of numerous asteroids in our neighborhood, but there are few key caveats. Since their images date from a few years ago, asteroids that haven’t been reobserved lately have effectively been lost at this point, although they could be picked up again in newer images down the road, says Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.