WASHINGTON — One of the biggest risks facing humanity right now is the fact that we don't know if a massive asteroid is on its way to kill all life on Earth. This is because space is so big that even huge asteroids are almost impossible to spot. <br /><br />But now NASA is creating the best tool for spotting an Earth-killing asteroid before it's too late to do anything about it. Here are the details:<br /><br />NASA reports that it has greenlighted a plan to finish and launch its Near Earth Object Surveyor mission by the year 2026. <br /><br />The N.E.O. Surveyor will be a 6-meter-long space telescope that will use infrared imaging to boost the chances astronomers have of finding large objects that might hit Earth.<br /><br />Every night, astronomers across the globe use ground-based, optical telescopes to find new near-Earth objects, or N.E.O.s, and determine whether they pose a threat to Earth or not. <br /><br />But these ground-based optical telescopes are only able to look for N.E.O.s in the night sky. <br /><br />Currently, there are no known NEO impact threats to Earth for the next century. <br /><br />However, unknown N.E.O.s can lead to unpredicted impacts, like the Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Russia in 2013, which went undetected because it came from the direction of the sun. <br /><br />The NEO Surveyor will use infrared sensors that can help astronomers find objects approaching Earth during the day from the direction of the sun — something that can't be done from ground-based observatories.<br /><br />In 2010, NASA completed its goal of discovering 90% of all near-Earth objects larger than one kilometer in width. <br /><br />In 2005, the agency was directed by the U.S. Congress to find 90% of N.E.O.s larger than 140 meters in width. To date, NASA says it has found 40% of the objects within this range.
