Earth and Asteroids: The New NASA Tool that Spots Space Objects

A large space rock flew past Earth on Sunday evening. Astronomers already knew it was not going to hit the planet or pose danger to any cities, thanks to their new computer program called Scout.

Scout is a new tool NASA has developed in order to detect potentially dangerous asteroids, and it is currently being tested at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The program is an alert system that constantly scans data from telescopes to see if there are any reports of "Near Earth Objects." When it finds something close to Earth it makes a fast calculation to see if the planet is at risk and directs other telescopes to check if the risk is legitimate.

NASA pays for various telescopes that scan the skies on a nightly basis for intruders headed for the Earth.

"The NASA surveys are finding something like at least five asteroids every night," said astronomer Paul Chodas, from the Jet Propulsion Lab.

"When a telescope first finds a moving object, all you know is it's just a dot moving on the sky," Chodas explained. "You have no information about how far away it is. The more telescopes you get pointed at an object, the more data you get, and the more you're sure you are how big it is, and which way it's headed. But sometimes you don't have a lot of time to make those observations."

"Objects can come close to the Earth shortly after discovery -- sometimes one day, two days, even hours in some cases," said Davide Farnocchia, another expert from the Jet Propulsion Lab. "The main goal of Scout is to speed up the confirmation process."

The rock headed toward the Earth on Sunday was discovered sometime between Oct. 25-26, according to the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System.

Scout did a quick analysis of the details and found the rock was headed for Earth but missed hitting us by 310,000 miles. Three other telescopes also said the rock missed Earth by a large margin.

Astronomers say the object was between 5 and 25 meters wide.

Scout is still in its testing phase, but it is said to become a fully operational program later this year.