There is good news on the planetary defense front. With the ground-based U.S. National Science Foundation's Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) five years from entering service, coupled with the selection of the space telescope NEOCam as a finalist in the NASA Discovery Mission program, the congressional mandate to track 90 percent of Near Earth Asteroids larger than 140 meters can be fulfilled. LSST alone will be able to find about 60 percent of asteroids in this size range in its first decade of operation. Together, LSST on the ground and NEOCam in space could complete this asteroid survey in about a decade. Importantly, NEOCam will provide us with a more accurate measure of an asteroid's size - a critical parameter for designing deflection missions.
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