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Asteroids can strike from any direction, but it is impossible to keep an eye on the entire sky\u2026 or is it?<\/p>\n
As part of the global effort to detect potentially hazardous asteroids and comets, ESA is developing a series of automated telescopes to scan the sky each night.<\/p>\n
The \u2018Flyeye\u2019 telescopes take inspiration, and their name, from the large compound eye of an insect, which has evolved over millions of years to detect motion \u2013 and therefore potential danger \u2013 from almost any direction.<\/p>\n
With their unique design, the Flyeye telescopes can capture a region of the night sky that is over 200 times as large as the full Moon in a single image, while maintaining the high image quality needed to detect the motion of even very faint objects.<\/p>\n
ESA\u2019s Space Safety programme plans to deploy a network of \u2018Flyeye\u2019 telescopes around the world that will work together to carry out nightly sky surveys and automatically identify possible new Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) \u2013 especially any that could impact our planet.<\/p>\n
These discoveries will be confirmed by astronomers in ESA\u2019s\u00a0Planetary Defence Office\u00a0before being submitted to the Minor Planet Center, the global sorting house for asteroid observations. From there, the newly discovered objects will trigger follow-up observations and, if necessary, a planetary defence response.<\/p>\n
Click\u00a0here\u00a0for the unsubtitled version of the video.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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