Before you start worrying about the next big asteroid to attack – and this is a real concern – I want you to know that there are several observing programs around the world dedicated to identifying all the space rocks of potentially dangerous size and orbit.

Currently, there are no known objects in dangerous orbits for at least a hundred years.

One of the workhorses of this field is the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, which has given its name to a number of comets while logging asteroid after asteroid. And this workhorse system is getting expanded from its two Hawaiian locations to include new observatories in South Africa and Chile. This means that if a killer space rock comes at us from the extreme south, we will, when the new facilities become fully operational, be able to spot it. And between all four telescopes, we can monitor the entirety of our dark skies every 24 hours.

Now, we just need the asteroid protection system that sci-fi keeps promising.

More Information

University of Hawai’i press release