To Defend a Planet: Coding the Near-Earth Object Surveyor Mission

Authors:

Mei Lin, Federica Spoto

Date Created:

2025-01-01

Course Title:

Professor:

Not specified

About Paper:

On February 15th, 2013, an asteroid entering the Earth’s hour timespan. Digest2 calculates scores ranging from 0 to 100 atmosphere over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, triggered an that describe the likelihood of an asteroid belonging to a particular airburst that injured over 1,500 individuals. Currently, we have yecategory (NEO or MBA) or asteroid family (Mars Crosser, to observe and discover more than 50% of potentially hazardous Hungarias, Phocaea, Pallas, Jupiter Trojan, and Jupiter Family asteroids (PHAs), objects whose trajectories closely approach comet), with each observation possessing a unique combination of Earth and can cause significant regional damage upon impact. scores. By adjusting the number of data bins available to digest2 Our project refines a short-arc determination software called and analyzing score distributions, we can identify numerical digest2 and testing classification algorithms in collaboration withregions where NEOs and MBAs “cluster,” allowing us to train NASA’s NEO Surveyor Team to (1) accurately identify Near filtering and machine learning (ML) algorithms to distinguish Earth Objects (NEOs) within samples dominated by Main Belt between the two populations. The results of our analysis will Asteroids (MBAs), (2) identify candidates for orbit determination, necessitate the minimum amount of information that the NEO (3) tag priority objects for further observations, and (4) create Surveyor must gather while observing to obtain an accurate real- a more robust pipeline for the NEO Surveyor Telescope, which time classification. Additionally, our filtering and ML models will collects observations with novel asteroid astrometry. By analyzing operate as a downstream pipeline to tag priority NEOs for further simulated asteroid data, we utilize the digest2 score to identify orbit determination, serving as the foundation for higher-precision the dynamical characteristics of each tracklet, defined as a set ofNEO identification and position tracking. observations of an asteroid from the same observatory within a six-

Abstract:

On February 15th, 2013, an asteroid entering the Earth’s hour timespan. Digest2 calculates scores ranging from 0 to 100 atmosphere over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, triggered an that describe the likelihood of an asteroid belonging to a particular airburst that injured over 1,500 individuals. Currently, we have yecategory (NEO or MBA) or asteroid family (Mars Crosser, to observe and discover more than 50% of potentially hazardous Hungarias, Phocaea, Pallas, Jupiter Trojan, and Jupiter Family asteroids (PHAs), objects whose trajectories closely approach comet), with each observation possessing a unique combination of Earth and can cause significant regional damage upon impact. scores. By adjusting the number of data bins available to digest2 Our project refines a short-arc determination software called and analyzing score distributions, we can identify numerical digest2 and testing classification algorithms in collaboration withregions where NEOs and MBAs “cluster,” allowing us to train NASA’s NEO Surveyor Team to (1) accurately identify Near filtering and machine learning (ML) algorithms to distinguish Earth Objects (NEOs) within samples dominated by Main Belt between the two populations. The results of our analysis will Asteroids (MBAs), (2) identify candidates for orbit determination, necessitate the minimum amount of information that the NEO (3) tag priority objects for further observations, and (4) create Surveyor must gather while observing to obtain an accurate real- a more robust pipeline for the NEO Surveyor Telescope, which time classification. Additionally, our filtering and ML models will collects observations with novel asteroid astrometry. By analyzing operate as a downstream pipeline to tag priority NEOs for further simulated asteroid data, we utilize the digest2 score to identify orbit determination, serving as the foundation for higher-precision the dynamical characteristics of each tracklet, defined as a set ofNEO identification and position tracking. observations of an asteroid from the same observatory within a six-

Source:

Harvard / Harvard College | Eliot House | Neuroscience | 2028 / 2025

Topics:

asteroid, object, surveyor, digest2, score, neo, observation, identify, earth, determination, neos, near

Co-authors:

@meilin322 , @federicaspoto323