NASA to launch asteroid hunting spacecraft in 2027
A NewsNation exclusive reveals NASA's high-tech plan to save Earth if an asteroid ever comes barreling toward the planet. The NEO Surveyor, set to launch in 2027, is the first spacecraft specifically designed to hunt large asteroids and comets that could harm Earth.
NewsNation got a look at the NEO Surveyor, which is being built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
After its launch, the NEO Surveyor will be able to spot about 90 percent of asteroids and comets that might pose a hazard to Earth within a range of about 30 million miles. Those that are smaller than about 500 feet in diameter are nearly impossible to see from Earth but not from space.
The NEO Surveyor's infrared technology will also be capable of measuring the size and composition of these fast-moving objects.
'We're looking for near-Earth objects — those are the objects that are within the same sort of orbit as the Earth. And the reason we want to look for those is some of those have the potential to impact the Earth,' NASA NEO Surveyor project manager Tom Hoffman told NewsNation.
'So, with this particular project, we'll be looking for those in this very special spectrum called infrared, trying to detect them and find them before they find us,' he added.
The Surveyor's announcement comes as scientists have almost fully ruled out any threat from the asteroid 2024 YR4. At one point, the odds of a strike in 2032 were as high as about 3 percent and topped the world's asteroid-risk lists.
ESA has since lowered the odds to 0.001 percent. NASA has it down to 0.0017 percent — meaning the asteroid will safely pass Earth in 2032 and there's no threat of impact for the next century.
NASA has already proved it is capable of redirecting an asteroid, should one pose a serious threat to Earth.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Late-night SpaceX rocket launch in Florida: When to see liftoff from Sebastian, Vero Beach
A late-night rocket launch from Florida is on the horizon. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will potentially carry Starlink internet-beaming satellites into low-Earth orbit, a Federal Aviation Administration operations plan advisory shows. Rockets here launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center or nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Weather permitting and depending on cloud cover, a rocket launch from Florida's Space Coast could be visible as far north as Jacksonville Beach and Daytona Beach to as far south as Vero Beach and West Palm Beach. When there's a launch window in the middle of the night or very early morning, there's an opportunity for unique photos — the rocket lights up the dark sky and the contrail after makes for a great photo. Below is more information about the SpaceX rocket launch in Florida and suggestions on where to watch them from here. Is there a launch today? Is there a launch today? Upcoming SpaceX, NASA, ULA rocket launch schedule at Cape Canaveral For questions or comments, email FLORIDA TODAY Space Reporter Rick Neale at rneale@ or Space Reporter Brooke Edwards at bedwards@ For more space news from the USA TODAY Network, visit Mission: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the next batch of Starlink internet satellites into low-Earth orbit, a Federal Aviation Administration operations plan advisory indicates. Launch window: 1:48 a.m. to 6:18 a.m. ET Tuesday, July 8, 2025 Launch location: Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida Sonic booms for Space Coast of Florida (Merritt Island, Melbourne area): No Trajectory: Northeast Live coverage starts 90 minutes before liftoff at : You can watch live rocket launch coverage from USA TODAY Network's Space Team, which consists of FLORIDA TODAY space reporters Rick Neale and Brooke Edwards and visuals journalists Craig Bailey, Malcolm Denemark and Tim Shortt. Our Space Team will provide up-to-the-minute updates in a mobile-friendly live blog, complete with a countdown clock, at starting 90 minutes before liftoff. You can download the free FLORIDA TODAY app, which is available in the App Store or Google Play, or type into your browser. Shown is the National Weather Service-Melbourne radar, which shows conditions in real-time for the Space Coast, Brevard County, Orlando and other parts of Florida. The current date and time show up on the bottom right of this radar embed; otherwise, you may need to clear your cache. Sebastian Inlet State Park, 9700 S. State Road A1A, Melbourne Beach, Florida (cost to enter) Wabasso Beach Park, 1808 Wabasso Beach Road, Wabasso, Florida Ambersands Beach Park, 12566 N. SR A1A, Vero Beach, Florida (free parking) South Beach Park, 1700 Ocean Drive, Vero Beach, Florida (free parking) Merrill Barber Bridge in Vero Beach, Florida Alma Lee Loy Bridge in Vero Beach, Florida Fort Pierce Inlet State Park, 905 Shorewinds Drive, Fort Pierce, Florida Blind Creek Beachside North and South, 5460 S. Ocean Drive, Fort Pierce, Florida Blue Heron Beach, 2101 Blue Heron Blvd., Fort Pierce, Florida Frederick Douglass Memorial Park, 3600 S. Ocean Drive, Fort Pierce, Florida Dollman Park Beachside, 9200 S. Ocean Drive, Jensen Beach, Florida Herman's Bay Beach, 7880 S. Ocean Drive, Jensen Beach, Florida John Brooks Park Beachside, 3300 S. Ocean Drive, Fort Pierce, Florida Middle Cove Beach, 4600 S. Ocean Drive, Fort Pierce, Florida Normandy Beach in Jensen Beach, Florida Pepper Park Beachside, 3302 N. SR A1A, Fort Pierce, Florida Walton Rocks Beach, 6700 S. Ocean Drive, Jensen Beach, Florida (dog park) Waveland Beach, 10350 S. Ocean Drive, Jensen Beach, Florida State Road A1A causeway in Stuart, Florida House of Refuge and beach, 301 S.E. MacArthur Blvd., Stuart, Florida This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: SpaceX rocket launch in Florida: What time does Falcon 9 lift off?
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
US military cuts climate scientists off from vital satellite sea-ice data
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Climate scientists in the United States are to be cut off from satellite data measuring the amount of sea ice — a sensitive barometer of climate change — as the U.S. Department of Defense announces plans to cancel processing of the data for scientific research. The changes are the latest attacks by the U.S. government on science and the funding of scientific research in an effort to slash the budget to enable tax cuts elsewhere. Already, these attacks have seen the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the National Science Foundation evicted from their offices, references to climate science removed from websites, funding of data for hurricane forecasts cancelled, and dozens of NASA missions under threat and their project teams asked to produce close-down plans as the space agency's budget is slashed. Now, scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), based at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who have been using data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) that is flown on a series of satellites that form the United States Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, have been told they will soon no longer have access to that data. SSMIS is a microwave radiometer that can scan Earth for ice coverage on land and sea. The Department of Defense uses this data for planning deployments of its own ships, but it has always made the processed data available to scientists, too — until now. In an announcement on June 24, the Department of Defense declared that the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center operated by the U.S. Navy would cease the real-time processing and stop supplying scientists with the sea-ice data, although NPR reports that, following an outcry at the suddenness of this decision, it has been put back to the end of July. Politics aside, purely from a scientific point of view, this is madness. The sea-ice index, which charts how much ice is covering the ocean in the Arctic and Antarctic, is strongly dependent upon global warming, with increasing average temperatures both in the ocean and in the atmosphere leading to more sea-ice melting. Sea ice acts as a buffer to slow or even prevent the melting of large glaciers; remove that buffer and catastrophic melting of glaciers moves one big step closer, threatening dangerous sea level rises. Without the ability to track the sea ice, scientists are blinded to one of the most significant measures of climate change and become unable to tell how close we are getting to the brink. But there's even a commercial side to knowing how much sea ice is present on our oceans. The fewer icebergs there are, the closer cargo ships can sail around the north pole, allowing them to take shorter, faster routes. RELATED STORIES — Earth's sea ice hits all-time low, NASA satellites reveal — Climate change: Causes and effects — Trump's 2026 budget would slash NASA funding by 24% and its workforce by nearly one third Of course, the United States is not the only country to operate climate instruments on satellites. For instance, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has a satellite called Shizuku, more formally known as the Global Change Observation Mission-Water (GCOM-W). On board Shizuku is an instrument called the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2, or AMSRS-2, which does pretty much the same job as SSMIS. Researchers at NSIDC had already been looking to transfer over to AMSRS-2 data, perhaps having got wind that the Department of Defense's decision was coming down the pipeline. But the switch will take time for the calibration of the instrument and data with NSIDC's systems, leading to a gap in scientists' data — a blind spot in our monitoring of the climate that we can ill afford.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Late-night SpaceX rocket launch in Florida: When to see liftoff from Daytona to New Smyrna Beach
A late-night rocket launch from Florida is on the horizon. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will potentially carry Starlink internet-beaming satellites into low-Earth orbit, a Federal Aviation Administration operations plan advisory shows. Rockets here launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center or nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Weather permitting and depending on cloud cover, a rocket launch from Florida's Space Coast could be visible as far north as Jacksonville Beach and Daytona Beach to as far south as Vero Beach and West Palm Beach. When there's a launch window in the middle of the night or very early morning, there's an opportunity for unique photos — the rocket lights up the dark sky and the contrail after makes for a great photo. Below is more information about the SpaceX rocket launch in Florida and suggestions on where to watch them from here. Is there a launch today? Is there a launch today? Upcoming SpaceX, NASA, ULA rocket launch schedule at Cape Canaveral For questions or comments, email FLORIDA TODAY Space Reporter Rick Neale at rneale@ or Space Reporter Brooke Edwards at bedwards@ For more space news from the USA TODAY Network, visit Mission: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the next batch of Starlink internet satellites into low-Earth orbit, a Federal Aviation Administration operations plan advisory indicates. Launch window: 1:48 a.m. to 6:18 a.m. ET Tuesday, July 8, 2025 Launch location: Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida Sonic booms for Space Coast of Florida (Merritt Island, Melbourne area): No Trajectory: Northeast Live coverage starts 90 minutes before liftoff at : You can watch live rocket launch coverage from USA TODAY Network's Space Team, which consists of FLORIDA TODAY space reporters Rick Neale and Brooke Edwards and visuals journalists Craig Bailey, Malcolm Denemark and Tim Shortt. Our Space Team will provide up-to-the-minute updates in a mobile-friendly live blog, complete with a countdown clock, at starting 90 minutes before liftoff. You can download the free FLORIDA TODAY app, which is available in the App Store or Google Play, or type into your browser. Shown is the National Weather Service-Melbourne radar, which shows conditions in real-time for the Space Coast, Brevard County, Orlando and other parts of Florida. The current date and time show up on the bottom right of this radar embed; otherwise, you may need to clear your cache. In Volusia County, immediately north of Brevard County — home to Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station — you can get a great view of a SpaceX, NASA or United Launch Alliance rocket launch. The best views to watch a rocket launch from here is along the beach. Look due south. Recommended spots: • South New Smyrna Beach (Canaveral National Seashore) • Mary McLeod Bethune Beach Park, 6656 S. Atlantic Ave., New Smyrna Beach. Bethune Beach is 3.5 miles south of New Smyrna Beach and one mile north of the Apollo Beach entrance to Canaveral National Seashore Park. • Apollo Beach at Canaveral National Seashore (south of New Smyrna Beach). Canaveral National Seashore runs along Florida's East Coast in Volusia County and Brevard County. To access Apollo Beach, take Interstate 95 to exit 249, then travel east until it turns into State Road A1A. Follow SR A1A south to the park entrance. • Oak Hill riverfront is the southernmost city in South Volusia County. • Sunrise Park, 275 River Road, Oak Hill • Goodrich's Seafood and Oyster House back deck, 253 River Road, Oak Hill • Seminole Rest national historic site, 211 River Road, Oak Hill • Riverbreeze Park, 250 H.H. Burch Road, Oak Hill • Mary Dewees Park, 178 N. Gaines St., Oak Hill • Nancy Cummings Park, 232 Cummings St., Oak Hill • Jimmie Vann Sunrise Park, 275 River Road, Oak Hill • A.C. Delbert Dewees Municipal Pier, 243 River Road, Oak Hill • Bird Observation Pier on River Road across from A.C. Delbert Municipal Pier (see above) • Rose Bay in Port Orange, Florida • beaches along New Smyrna Beach, Florida • New Smyrna Beach Inlet, New Smyrna Beach lifeguard station • Halifax Harbor Marina in Daytona Beach, Florida • Ormond-by-the-Sea in Ormond Beach, Florida • George R. Kennedy Memorial Park in Edgewater, Florida Sangalang is a lead digital producer for USA TODAY Network. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram at @byjensangalang. Support local journalism. Consider subscribing to a Florida newspaper. This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: SpaceX rocket launch in Florida: What time does Falcon 9 lift off?
