{"id":74926,"date":"2025-05-27T13:39:27","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T20:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=74926"},"modified":"2025-05-28T10:09:41","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T17:09:41","slug":"near-earth-asteroids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/near-earth-asteroids\/","title":{"rendered":"What are near-Earth asteroids made of? Researchers are about to find out."},"content":{"rendered":"

In the vast expanse of space, an estimated 1 million Near Earth Objects (NEOs), also known as near-Earth asteroids, are constantly orbiting close to our planet. Every night, astronomers track NEOs and discover new ones, noting how fast they\u2019re traveling, how large they are and where they\u2019re headed. Because of their work, world leaders could get advance warning if one of these celestial objects is on a collision course with Earth, helping them prepare for calamity.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there\u2019s one thing astronomers don\u2019t yet know, something that could be key to defending Earth from dangerous collisions: how to quickly identify what an NEO is made of.\u202f<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s where <\/span>David Trilling<\/span><\/b> and <\/span>Remington Cantelas<\/span><\/b> come in.<\/span><\/p>\n

With grant funds from NASA, Trilling, a professor of astronomy and planetary science at NAU, and Cantelas, a doctoral student in astronomy at NAU, will spend the next three years analyzing the makeup of 1,000 NEOs using cutting-edge telescope technology at observatories in Hawaii and Australia. Their work will provide one of the largest surveys of NEO compositions to date, helping astronomers defend our planet more effectively and helping scientists better understand the diverse makeup of the universe.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen an asteroid is coming our way, we need to know as much as we can about it before it hits,\u201d Trilling said. \u201cWe already have the tools to find out where it might impact. But what we don\u2019t know is, is it a rock, is it a loose pile of gravel or is it a solid block of iron? Without that information, we don\u2019t know whether to launch a missile to change its trajectory or whether to let it be. We don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s going to cause mass destruction or a nice little meteor shower.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Information on the material makeup of NEOs is lacking because, until very recently, analyzing them was a painfully slow process.\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe traditional way is called spectroscopy, and it\u2019s very comprehensive and very slow,\u201d Trilling said. \u201cYou come up with the composition of each asteroid by looking for light absorption features and matching them with the light absorption features of different minerals. With the spectroscopy method, you can observe a few dozen asteroids in a year.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Cantelas, who is leading the research project, will use a new camera called MuSCAT\u2014short for Multicolor Simultaneous Camera for studying Atmospheres of Transiting exoplanets\u2014to move at a comparatively breakneck speed, turning out more than 300 asteroid observations in the span of a year. While this approach gives Cantelas the benefit of speed, it does sacrifice some detail.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"night<\/a>
Remi Cantelas will use cutting-edge telescope technology at observatories in Hawaii and Australia to find out more about the makeup of NEOs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cInstead of splitting the light into hundreds of wavelengths, we split the light into four wavelengths,\u201d Trilling said. \u201cWe go 100 times faster, but we gather 100 times less information. We\u2019ll only be able to tell you if the asteroid is iron, if it\u2019s a rock or if it\u2019s something else entirely.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But by gathering a large volume of information, the pair of researchers will give astronomers a broad understanding of the different types of asteroids that are orbiting near Earth\u2014something they haven\u2019t had before.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSomeday, when an asteroid is coming toward Earth, we\u2019ll have a catalog that says, \u2018It\u2019s this percent likely it\u2019s this material and that percent likely it\u2019s that material,\u2019\u201d Trilling said. \u201cThat\u2019s going to be very valuable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Planetary defense isn\u2019t the only thing driving the pair\u2019s work. By combining information about an asteroid\u2019s orbit with information about the asteroid\u2019s material composition, Trilling said, astronomers can develop a richer understanding of the solar system and its material diversity.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s cool about NEOs is they were all formed somewhere else in the solar system before they came near Earth\u2019s orbit,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you know what they\u2019re made of, and you know how to track their paths of orbit, you could potentially map out the entire solar system without leaving Earth.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The pair\u2019s work is already underway. Last year, Trilling said, Cantelas led a pilot project observing a random sample of 10 asteroids using MuSCAT technology. She and Trilling expected to find that most or all of the asteroids were made of the most common types of rocky material in the solar system. Instead, they got a surprise.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe compositions are all over the map,\u201d Trilling said. \u201cHalf of them are what we expected, but the other half are really bizarre compositions we never thought we\u2019d find in this survey, and their mineral signatures are really pronounced. What if the solar system has more \u2018oddballs\u2019 than we thought? Where did they come from? How did they get here? There will be lots of mysteries to solve.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/span><\/p>\n


\nJill Kimball | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-2282 | jill.kimball@nau.edu<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the vast expanse of space, an estimated 1 million Near Earth Objects (NEOs), also known as near-Earth asteroids, are constantly orbiting close to our planet. Every night, astronomers track NEOs and discover new ones, noting how fast they\u2019re traveling, how large they are and where they\u2019re headed. Because of their work, world leaders could…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":74928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}