With NASA’s DART mission recently succeeding in deflecting an asteroid from its course, you might think our planet is sorted when it comes to defense against incoming asteroids. But there are a whole lot of asteroids out there, and looking for potentially dangerous asteroids is an ongoing job.
Not every near-Earth asteroid is a threat to the planet, as many are small enough that they would burn up in Earth’s atmosphere while others travel in a way that doesn’t intersect with Earth’s orbit. If an asteroid is larger than 460 feet in diameter and has crossed Earth’s orbit, it is classified as a Potentially Hazardous Object and will be monitored by astronomers.
“Because of Gaia, we know more about the stars in the galaxy which act as a backdrop to asteroid observations,” explained Tineke Roegiers, community support for the Gaia mission, in a statement. “Asteroid’s positions are obtained against these background stars, so the better one knows where the stars are, the more precisely the orbits of asteroids can be computed.”
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