AI algorithm discovers 'potentially hazardous' asteroid 600 ft wide in a 1st for astronomy

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A new artificial intelligence algorithm programmed to hunt for potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroids has discovered its first space rock.

The roughly 600-foot-wide (180 meters) asteroid has received the designation 2022 SF289, and is expected to approach Earth to within 140,000 miles (225,000 kilometers). That distance is shorter than that between our planet and the moon, which are on average, 238,855 miles (384,400 km) apart. This is close enough to define the rock as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA), but that doesn't mean it will impact Earth in the foreseeable future.

The HelioLinc3D program, which found the asteroid, has been developed to help the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, currently under construction in Northern Chile, conduct its upcoming 10-year survey of the night sky by searching for space rocks in Earth's near vicinity. As such, the algorithm could be vital in giving scientists the heads up about space rocks on a collision course with Earth.

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This new PHA was found when the asteroid-hunting algorithm was paired with data from the ATLAS survey in Hawaii, as a test of its efficiency before Rubin is completed.

The discovery of 2022 SF289 has shown that HelioLinc3D can spot asteroids with fewer observations than current space rock hunting techniques allow.

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Searching for potentially hazardous asteroids involves taking images of parts of the sky at least four times a night. When astronomers spot a moving point of light traveling in an unambiguous straight line across the series of images, they can be quite certain they have found an asteroid. Further observations are then made to better constrain the orbit of these space rocks around the sun.

The new algorithm, however, can make a detection from just two images, speeding up the whole process.

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