A new artificial intelligence algorithm programmed to hunt down potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroids has discovered the first space rock. The nearly 600-foot-wide (180 meters) asteroid has been designated 2022 SF289 and is expected to come within 140,000 miles (225,000 kilometers) of Earth. This distance is less than the distance between our planet and the Moon, which averages 238,855 miles (384,400 km). That’s enough to qualify the rock as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA), but that doesn’t mean it will impact Earth in the foreseeable future.

The HelioLinc3D program that found the asteroid was designed to help the Vera K. Rubin Observatory, currently under construction in northern Chile, conduct an upcoming 10-year survey of the night sky by searching for space rocks near Earth. As such, the algorithm could be vital in providing scientists with information about space rocks on a collision course with Earth.

“By demonstrating the real-world effectiveness of the software that Rubin will use to search for thousands of potentially dangerous asteroids that are not yet known, the discovery of 2022 SF289 will make us all safer,” said Ari Heinze, Vera C. Rubin Research Fellow. .

Tens of millions of cosmic rocks roam the solar system, from asteroids a few feet in size to dwarf planets the size of the Moon. These space rocks are remnants of material from which planets originally formed about 4.5 billion years ago.

Although most of these objects are far from Earth, most asteroids are located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and some have orbits that bring them closer to Earth. Sometimes uncomfortably close.

Space rocks approaching Earth are designated Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), while asteroids that pass within about 5 million miles of the planet are designated Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). . However, this does not mean that they will affect the planet. As with 2022 SF289, no currently known PHA poses a risk of exposure for at least the next 100 years. Astronomers look for potentially dangerous asteroids and monitor their orbits to make sure they’re not headed for a collision with a planet.

This new PHA was found when the asteroid hunting algorithm was combined with data from the ATLAS survey in Hawaii to test its performance before Rubin was completed. The discovery of 2022 SF289 showed that HelioLinc3D was able to detect asteroids with fewer observations than current methods for searching for space rocks.

Ruby is ready to join a potentially dangerous asteroid hunt

Searching for potentially dangerous asteroids involves viewing parts of the sky at least four times a night. When astronomers see a moving point of light moving in a straight line in a series of images, they can be pretty sure they’ve found an asteroid. Follow-up observations are then made to better constrain the orbit of these space rocks around the Sun.

However, the new algorithm only detects two images, speeding up the whole process.

So far, about 2,350 PHAs have been detected, and while none of them pose a threat of collision with Earth in the near future, astronomers are not ready to be comforted as they know there are many potentially dangerous space rocks yet to be discovered. . According to estimates, the Vera Rubin observatory could detect up to 3,000 potentially dangerous asteroids that have yet to be discovered.

The 27-foot-wide (8.4-meter) Rubin mirror and massive 3,200-megapixel camera will scan the night sky twice a night rather than four times a night as current telescopes do. From there, HelioLinc3D was created, a code that could find asteroids in the Rubin dataset even if fewer observations were available.

However, the algorithm’s developers wanted to give the software a test run before Rubin was complete. This meant seeing if it could find an asteroid in the data already collected, with very few observations for existing algorithms.

With ATLAS data proposed as such a test object, HelioLinc3D began searching for PHAs and hit Paydirt on July 18, 2023, finding 2022 SF289. This PHA was observed by ATLAS on September 19, 2022, when it was 3 million miles from Earth. ATLAS actually detected this new PHA three times in four nights, but missed it four times in the same night, meaning existing surveys missed it. By combining data from four nights, HelioLinc3D was able to identify PHA.

“Any investigation will have difficulty detecting objects close to the limit of sensitivity, such as 2022 SF289, but HelioLinc3D shows that it is possible to recover these faint objects if they are visible for several nights,” said Larry Denne, ATLAS chief astronomer. “This effectively gives us a ‘bigger, better’ telescope.”

After locating 2022 SF289, astronomers can confirm the discovery with other telescopes to confirm the presence of PHA.

“This is just a taste of what can be expected from the Rubin observatory in less than two years, when HelioLinc3D will discover an object like this every night,” said Mario Jurich, Rubin scientist and HelioLinc3D team leader. “But more broadly, it’s a preview of astronomy’s next age of dense data. From HelioLinc3D to AI-enabled code, the next decade of exploration will be a story of progress in both algorithms and new large telescopes.