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NASA now able to locate ‘doomsday asteroids’ that could pose a threat to Earth

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NASA is now able to better locate ‘doomsday asteroids” that could pose a potential threat to Earth.The American space agency has upgraded its asteroid hazard software to the new Sentry-II algorithm for the first time in 20 years.This upgrade will help NASA improve its detection of dangerous space rocks hurling towards out planet, the Daily Mirror reports.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) uses a special software to analyse if possibly hazardous asteroids could hit Earth. It works by frequently scanning a list of asteroids and their orbits that are already known to be possibly hazardous and then calculates if any known or new asteroids could potentially hit Earth.

The system being used is known as the Yarkovsky effect, referring to how an asteroid absorbs sunlight and emits it as heat. This heat impacts the asteroid's path and can affect the possibility of it hitting the Earth.

Sentry – the original software – was previously unable to do this, but Sentry-II can. Scientists had to previously do manual calculations to work out the Yarkovsky effect so the software upgrade will make a massive difference. To stay up to date with all the latest news, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters here. NASA keeps an eye on almost 28,000 near-Earth asteroids currently and it is hoped that the software upgrade will help them see more.

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