The Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project is a collaboration of the United States Air Force, NASA, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory for the systematic detection and tracking of near-Earth objects. LINEAR was responsible for the majority of asteroid discoveries from 1998 until it was overtaken by the Catalina Sky Survey in 2005. As of 15 September 2011, LINEAR had detected 231,082 new small Solar System bodies, of which at least 2,423 were near-Earth asteroids and 279 were comets. The instruments used by the LINEAR program are located at Lincoln Laboratory's Experimental Test Site (ETS) on the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) near Socorro, New Mexico.
Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) was a program run by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, surveying the sky for near-Earth objects. NEAT was conducted from December 1995 until April 2007, at GEODSS on Hawaii, as well as at Palomar Observatory in California. With the discovery of more than 40 thousand minor planets, NEAT has been one of the most successful programs in this field, comparable to the Catalina Sky Survey, LONEOS and Mount Lemmon Survey.
1620 Geographos, provisional designation 1951 RA, is a highly elongated, stony asteroid, near-Earth object and potentially hazardous asteroid of the Apollo group, with a mean-diameter of approximately 2.5 km (1.6 mi). It was discovered on 14 September 1951, by astronomers Albert George Wilson and Rudolph Minkowski at the Palomar Observatory in California, United States. The asteroid was named in honor of the National Geographic Society.
The Spacewatch Project is an astronomical survey that specializes in the study of minor planets, including various types of asteroids and comets at University of Arizona telescopes on Kitt Peak near Tucson, Arizona, in the United States. The Spacewatch Project has been active longer than any other similar currently active programs.
Brian A. Skiff is an American astronomer noted for discovering numerous asteroids and a number of comets including the periodic comets 114P/Wiseman–Skiff and 140P/Bowell–Skiff.
Roy A. Tucker (1951 – 2021) was an American astronomer best known for the co-discovery of near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis (formerly known as 2004 MN4) along with David J. Tholen and Fabrizio Bernardi of the University of Hawaii. He was a prolific discoverer of minor planets, credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 702 numbered minor planets between 1996 and 2010. He also discovered two comets: 328P/LONEOS–Tucker and C/2004 Q1, a Jupiter-family and near-parabolic comet, respectively.
The OCA–DLR Asteroid Survey (ODAS) was an astronomical survey to search for small Solar System bodies focusing on near-Earth objects in the late 1990s. This European scientific project was a collaboration between the French Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur (OCA) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The survey is credited for the discovery of one comet and more than 1000 minor planets during 1996–1999.
The Črni Vrh Observatory is an astronomical observatory located in western Slovenia, close to the settlement of Črni Vrh, near the town of Idrija. The current observatory was built in 1985 and stands at an elevation of 730 metres (2,400 ft). Much of the construction was done by volunteers.
The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System located at Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii, US, consists of astronomical cameras, telescopes and a computing facility that is surveying the sky for moving or variable objects on a continual basis, and also producing accurate astrometry and photometry of already-detected objects. In January 2019 the second Pan-STARRS data release was announced. At 1.6 petabytes, it is the largest volume of astronomical data ever released.
1627 Ivar, provisional designation 1929 SH, is an elongated stony asteroid and near-Earth object of the Amor group, approximately 15×6×6 km. It was discovered on 25 September 1929, by Danish astronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung at Leiden Southern Station, annex to the Johannesburg Observatory in South Africa. It was named after Ivar Hertzsprung, brother of the discoverer. 1627 Ivar was the first asteroid to be imaged by radar, in July 1985 by the Arecibo Observatory.
James Whitney Young is an American astronomer who worked in the field of asteroid research. After nearly 47 years with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at their Table Mountain Facility, Young retired July 16, 2009.
(185851) 2000 DP107 is a sub-kilometer sized asteroid, classified as potentially hazardous asteroid and near-Earth object of the Apollo group that is notable because it provided evidence for binary asteroids in the near-Earth population. The PROCYON probe developed by JAXA and the University of Tokyo was intended to flyby this asteroid before its ion thruster failed and could not be restarted.
4257 Ubasti, provisional designation 1987 QA, is a stony asteroid, classified as near-Earth object of the Apollo group and as Mars-crosser, approximately 1.5 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered by American astronomer Jean Mueller at the Palomar Observatory in California on 23 August 1987. The asteroid was named for Bastet – also known as Baast, Ubaste or Ubasti – the Egyptian goddess of cats.
(101869) 1999 MM is a sub-kilometer asteroid on an eccentric orbit, classified as a near-Earth object and potentially hazardous asteroid of the Apollo group. It was discovered on 20 June 1999, by the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search (LONEOS) at its U.S. Anderson Mesa Station in Flagstaff, Arizona. The first observation was made by Catalina Sky Survey just 8 days before its official discovery.
161989 Cacus is a stony asteroid, classified as near-Earth object and a potentially hazardous asteroid of the Apollo group, approximately 1 kilometer in diameter. It was discovered on 8 February 1978, by German astronomer Hans-Emil Schuster at ESO's La Silla Observatory in northern Chile. Its orbit is confined between Venus and Mars.
(31345) 1998 PG is an eccentric, stony asteroid and binary system, classified as near-Earth object of the Amor group of asteroids, approximately 900 meters in diameter. It minor-planet moon, S/2001 (31345) 1, has an estimated diameter of 270 meters.
(16960) 1998 QS52 (provisional designation 1998 QS52) is a stony asteroid on a highly eccentric orbit, classified as near-Earth object and potentially hazardous asteroid of the Apollo group, approximately 4.1 kilometers (2.5 mi) in diameter. It was discovered on 25 August 1998, by astronomers of the LINEAR program at Lincoln Laboratory's Experimental Test Site near Socorro, New Mexico, in the United States. This asteroid is one of the largest potentially hazardous asteroid known to exist.
(52768) 1998 OR2 (provisional designation 1998 OR2) is an asteroid on an eccentric orbit, classified as a near-Earth object and potentially hazardous asteroid of the Amor group, with a diameter of 2 kilometers (1.2 mi). It was discovered on 24 July 1998, by astronomers of the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program at the Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii. It is one of the brightest and therefore largest potentially hazardous asteroids known to exist. With an observation arc of 35 years, the asteroid has a well-determined orbit, and its trajectory is well known through the year 2197. The asteroid's orbit is only potentially hazardous on a time scale of thousands of years.
2018 AH is a sub-kilometer asteroid, classified as near-Earth object of the Apollo group, approximately 100 m (300 ft) in diameter. It was first observed on 4 January 2018, by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on Mauna Loa and quickly followed-up by many other surveys, with precovery observations found from Pan-STARRS and PTF from the day previous.
2020 SL1 is a near-Earth asteroid of the Apollo group, discovered by the Pan-STARRS 1 survey at Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii on 18 September 2020. With an estimated diameter of 0.9–2.0 km (0.56–1.24 mi), it is the largest potentially hazardous asteroid discovered in 2020.
