- Arecibo Celebrates National Engineers Week 06 Apr, 2022
- The Arecibo Observatory at the Upcoming 240th American Astronomical Society Meeting06 Apr, 2022
- The Arecibo Observatory Survey Salvage Committee Report06 Apr, 2022
- Facilities and Operations Update06 Apr, 2022
- PRISMA Meteor Radar Arrives at AO04 Apr, 2022
- The Grand Reopening of the Angel Ramos Science and Visitor Center at the Arecibo Observatory01 Apr, 2022
- Orbital stability analysis and photometric characterization of the second Earth Trojan asteroid 2020 XL531 Mar, 2022
- Arecibo Celebrates International Women’s Day31 Mar, 2022
- A Letter from the Director Eng. Francisco Cordova31 Mar, 2022
- The History of Arecibo’s Legacy Telescope to Impact the Future, Thanks to the AO Salvage Survey Committee31 Mar, 2022
- Announcing AO/GBT Single Dish Summer School May 16th - 20th, 2022 30 Mar, 2022
- NSF REU program at Arecibo receives funding for next 3 years23 Mar, 2022
- A Parkes "Murriyang" Search for Pulsars and Transients in the Large Magellanic Cloud23 Mar, 2022
- Noise analysis in the European Pulsar Timing Array data release 2 and its implications on the gravitational-wave background search23 Mar, 2022
- Arecibo S-band Radar Characterization of Local-scale Heterogeneities within Mercury's North Polar Deposits23 Mar, 2022
- Arecibo’s Eye on the Sun21 Mar, 2022
Arecibo Observatory Gets $19 Million NASA Grant to Help Protect Earth from Asteroids
Byadmin29 September 2019 Planetary
The four-year grant will enable UCF to observe and characterize near-Earth objects that pose a potential hazard to the planet or that could be candidates for future space missions.
They are part of the team working on the NASA project at the Arecibo Observatory.
Knowledge is power and NASA has just invested $19 million into the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to gain a lot of knowledge about asteroids.
NASA awarded the University of Central Florida (which manages the site on behalf of National Science Foundation) the four-year grant to observe and characterize near-Earth objects (NEO) that pose a potential hazard to Earth or that could be candidates for future space missions.
The observatory is home to the most powerful and most sensitive planetary radar system in the world, which means it is also a unique tool available to analyze NEOs, such as asteroids and comets. The knowledge helps NASA determine which objects pose significant risks and when and what to do to mitigate them. NASA officials can also use the information to determine which objects are the most viable for science missions – landing on an asteroid is not equally easy for all of them. Information the observatory provided about asteroid Bennu, for example, is one of the factors that led NASA to select the OSIRIS-REx mission for funding.
UCF manages the NSF facility under a cooperative agreement with Universidad Ana G. Méndez and Yang Enterprises, Inc. The NASA grant will be used for operations, maintenance and upgrades to the radar system that directly relate to the Arecibo Planetary Radar Group, which leads this work. The group will spend up to 800 hours a year analyzing NEOs during the grant period.
The award also includes money to support STEM education among high school students in Puerto Rico. The Science, Technology And Research (STAR) Academy brings together 30 local high-school students per semester once a week for 16 classes to learn about science and research at the observatory.
“The S-band planetary radar system on the 305-m William E. Gordon telescope at Arecibo Observatory is the most sensitive planetary radar system in the world,” says the Arecibo planetary radar program’s principal investigator Anne Virkki. She received her doctorate degree in astronomy from the University of Helsinki, Finland, and leads the planetary radar group at the observatory. “This is why Arecibo is such an amazing tool for our work. Our radar astrometry and characterization are critical for identifying objects that are truly hazardous to Earth and for the planning of mitigation efforts. We can use our system to constrain the size, shape, mass, spin state, composition, binarity, trajectory, and gravitational and surface environments of NEOs and this will help NASA to determine potential targets for future missions.”
Arecibo has played a role in analyzing NEOs since the mid-90s, observing 60-120 objects per year. Congress made NEOs a priority when it directed NASA in 2005 to seek out and characterize at least 90 percent of near-Earth objects larger than 140 meters by 2020.
“Arecibo plays an important role in discovery and advancing our knowledge of our solar system and our universe,” says Francisco Cordova, director of the facility. “We also play a critical role in helping to protect our planet through providing knowledge and unique expertise. It’s part of our mission and one of the reasons we are so passionate about our work.”
The international team of asteroid observers at the observatory includes: Flaviane Venditti from Brazil; Sean Marshall from the U.S.; Dylan Hickson from Canada, and Luisa Zambrano-Marin from Colombia. Co-investigators include Noemi Pinilla-Alonso from the Florida Space Institute; Yanga Fernandez from UCF; Patrick Taylor and Edgard Rivera-Valentin from the Lunar and Planetary Institute; Michael Nolan and Ellen Howell from the University of Arizona; Tracy Becker from the Southwest Research Institute, and Chris Magri from the University of Maine.