Astronomers to Develop New Telescopes for “Killer Asteroid” Search

Astronomers at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA)
have been awarded a $3.4 million grant by the Air Force Research
Laboratories to design a new observatory to survey the
entire sky and detect very faint objects. The Panoramic Survey
Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) is currently
conceived of as an array of small telescopes, and sites on
either the Big Island or on Maui are being considered. Planned to
become operational in 2006, Pan-STARRS will be more powerful for
survey work than all existing telescopes combined. A major goal
of the project is to identify and track asteroids that might
collide with Earth.

Commenting on the project, IfA Director Rolf Kudritzki said, “I am
pleased that the Institute will be able to play an important role
in finding these hazardous asteroids that threaten humanity.”

Exploiting recent advances in electronic detector technology,
Pan-STARRS will have revolutionary optical sensors with billions of
pixels, or picture elements. The IfA is collaborating with Lincoln
Laboratories of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to
develop the advanced detectors.

The telescopes will have a very large field of view, allowing them
to image an area about 30-40 times that of the full moon in a
single exposure. The system will rapidly survey large areas of
the sky, making it uniquely powerful for detecting transient
objects such as supernovae, and for detecting moving objects,
such as asteroids.

Once operational, Pan-STARRS will generate huge quantities of
data. To process these, the IfA astronomers have teamed up with
the Maui High Performance Computer Center (MHPCC), and with
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a leader
in the field of massive databases.

The huge database generated by Pan-STARRS will be made available
over the Internet so that others may use it for education and
research. Kudritzki commented that the Pan-STARRS database will
be “a unique opportunity for education.”

The currently favored design is an array of four relatively small
telescopes. This would permit rapid construction, and would have
a small environmental impact, because the system would be
very compact. In fact, one possibility being explored is to house
the system within the university’s existing telescope building on
Mauna Kea.

The IfA is working closely with the Office of Mauna Kea Management,
and in accord with the design review process set out in the Mauna
Kea Science Reserve Master Plan, to develop a design that minimizes
environmental and cultural impacts.

The data from Pan-STARRS will be used to address many scientific
questions, ranging from the origin of the Solar System to the
properties of the Universe on the largest scales. However, a
major goal of the project is to make an inventory of potentially
dangerous asteroids.

It is now widely recognized that a collision with a large
asteroid was responsible for the mass extinction of the
dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and that more frequent collisions
with smaller asteroids present a real hazard. Fatal asteroid
collisions are rare, but when they happen they can be very
destructive. In fact, experts have determined that, averaged
over time, the risk of dying from an asteroid strike is
approximately that of dying in a plane crash. A number of recent
widely publicized close encounters with asteroids have highlighted
the risk.

Congress has charged NASA to support searches for “killer
asteroids.” These surveys determine the orbits of the asteroids
that they discover, and then project them forward to see if they
will impact Earth. Pan-STARRS principal investigator Nick Kaiser
comments that “current surveys have detected roughly half of the
objects bigger than a mile in diameter. Impacts of this size
cause global-scale catastrophes. Pan-STARRS will help complete
this task and will extend the search to much smaller objects.”

Images and relevant links are available at
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~kaiser/pan-starrs/pressrelease

The Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii conducts
research into galaxies, cosmology, stars, planets, and the Sun.
Its faculty and staff are also involved in astronomy education,
deep space missions, and in the development and management of
the observatories on Haleakala and Mauna Kea. Refer to
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/ for more information about the
Institute.