A new NASA outreach project will enlist the help of amateur astronomers to discover near Earth objects (NEOs) and study their characteristics. NEOs are asteroids with orbits that occasionally bring them close to the Earth.
Amateur astronomers will help better characterize the population of NEOs, including their position, motion, rotation and changes in the intensity of light they emit. OSIRIS-REx is scheduled for launch in 2016 and will study material from an asteroid. Professional astronomers will use the information to refine theoretical models of asteroids, improving their understanding about asteroids similar to the one OSIRIS-Rex will encounter in 2019, designated 1999 RQ36.
OSIRIS-REx will map the asteroid’s global properties, measure non-gravitational forces and provide observations that can be compared with data obtained by telescope observations from Earth. In 2023, OSIRIS-REx will return back to Earth with at least 60 grams of surface material from the asteroid.
“Although few amateur astronomers have the capability to observe 1999 RQ36 itself, they do have the capability to observe other targets,” said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Amateur astronomers long have provided NEO tracking observations in support of NASA’s NEO Observation Program. A better understanding of NEOs is a critically important precursor in the selection and targeting of future asteroid missions.
OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program. “For well over 10 years, amateurs have been important contributors in the refinement of orbits for newly discovered near-Earth objects” said Edward Beshore, deputy principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Keywords – Amateur Astronomers to target asteroid, Near Earth Objects (NEO), OSIRIS-REx mission, University of Arizona in Tucson, 1999 RQ36.
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