AI System Finds First Possibly Dangerous Asteroid

2023 · VOA Learning English

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Transcript

1. A new artificial intelligence (AI) method has been used to identify an asteroid that could one day present a threat to Earth.

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2. Scientists made the discovery using a computer processing method called an algorithm.

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3. The algorithm searches through data collected by four different Earth-based telescopes.

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4. The goal is to identify asteroids that might present a risk of crashing into Earth. The asteroid search effort is financed by the American space agency NASA.

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5. It is operated by a team at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy The system is called ATLAS.

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6. It involves four different telescopes. Two of the telescopes are based in Hawaii.

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7. Another operates in Chile and the other sits in South Africa.

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8. ATLAS is designed to search the whole sky several times each night looking for moving objects, NASA explains

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9. NASA and its international partners continuously search the skies for what scientists call near-Earth objects (NEOs).

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10. Such objects include asteroids and comets that come within 50 million kilometers of Earth’s orbit.

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11. The effort aims to identify and follow NEOs that could one day strike Earth.

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12. NASA says a large majority of the NEOs that enter Earth’s atmosphere burn up before reaching the planet’s surface.

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13. But the space agency is concerned about larger NEOs up to 50 meters in size.

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14. NASA says such objects could cause widespread damage to areas they hit.

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15. The space agency considers NEOs that come within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth’s orbit and that are bigger than 140 meters “potentially

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16. hazardous objects.” Researchers from the University of Washington created the algorithm and led the latest discovery operation.

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17. The team announced in a statement it had identified a 182-meter-long asteroid named 2022 SF289.

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18. The find came during testing of the new algorithm, which the researchers called HelioLinc3D.

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19. The researchers said the newly discovered asteroid met the description of a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA).

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20. However, the scientists said asteroid 2022 SF289 will likely present no threat to Earth in the foreseeable future.

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21. The newly discovered asteroid was the first PHA to be identified with the HelioLinc3D algorithm.

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22. Scientists plan to use the new algorithm together with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is still being developed on top of a mountain in Chile.

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23. Rubin is expected to start operating in early 2025.

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24. University of Washington researchers have said the observatory should greatly improve the discovery rate of PHAs.

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25. This is because the telescope was built with a very powerful new camera and a huge mirror.

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26. Some NEOs are difficult to identify with existing telescopes because they can be blocked by bright areas of space.

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27. For example, other equipment missed asteroid 2022 SF289 because of rich star fields that exist in our Milky Way galaxy.

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28. Rubin’s instruments are expected to provide more detailed images and data to improve the identification process for NEOs.

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29. Ari Heinze is a researcher at the University of Washington and a main developer of the HelioLinc3D algorithm.

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30. He said in a statement, “By demonstrating the real-world effectiveness of the software that Rubin will use to look for thousands of yet-unknown potentially hazardous asteroids,

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31. the discovery of 2022 SF289 makes us all safer.”

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32. The University of Washington researchers say more than 2,350 have so far been discovered.

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33. They say with the new algorithm, scientists hope to

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34. identify thousands more.

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35. The HelioLinc3D algorithm was developed specifically to be used by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

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36. But Heinze and other researchers said they wanted to see if it could discover a new asteroid using existing telescope data.

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37. After Rubin’s team set HelioLinc3D to search through Rubin data, it identified its first PHA on July 18.

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38. The asteroid was 20 million kilometers from Earth.

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39. ATLAS astronomer Larry Denneau was a leader of the discovery team.

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40. Denneau added, “This in effect gives us a bigger, better telescope.”

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