Near-Earth Objects: Hunting Rocks in Space

Valeria Jaramillo Public Education Specialist / UCLA EPSS and NEO Surveyor

For billions of years, Earth’s landscape has changed slowly. Continents move relative to each other, mountains are worn down by wind and rain—these geologic forces take millions of years! But sometimes, change happens in an instant. A large asteroid impact can reshape the land in seconds! That’s why Principal Investigator Amy Mainzer and her amazing team is building NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor telescope. It’s a special space telescope designed to help us find those Earth-changing objects decades before they could ever reach our planet. We track the rocks so they never take us by surprise – like our beloved Dinosaurs!