NASA's latest launch lets you asteroid-watch from home

A treat for astronomy nerds, NASA has come up with a '3D real-time visualisation tool' to track and learn about the asteroids and space junk that find themselves in Earth's orbital neighbourhood.

The site, NASA’s Eyes on Asteroids, lets one navigate the said zone virtually and click on the comets or asteroids for information about them.

Countless space objects are discovered annually and those that make it to the orbits that pass the 'inner solar system' are called near-Earth objects (NEOs), according to the space agency. One can also explore the spacecraft that visit these objects.

"The new web-based app depicts the orbits of every known NEO, providing detailed information on those objects. Using the slider at the bottom of the screen, you can travel quickly forward and backward through time to see their orbital motions. The visualisation receives twice-daily updates with the latest data, so as soon as a new object is discovered and its orbit is calculated, it’s added to the app," NASA wrote in a post.

Also read: Delving into NASA's mission to knock an asteroid off course

Their astronomers study the space rocks, totalling about 28,000 now, geared to increase every year, to monitor their movement and determine any of them potentially impacting our planet.

The data can be accessed on any device that can explore Eyes on Asteroids using an internet connection, and does not require any downloading.

One can also track thrilling events such as an asteroid coming 'close' to Earth on the Asteroid Watch tab of the site.

“We were keen to include this feature, as asteroid close approaches often generate a lot of interest,” said Jason Craig, technical producer of the Visualization Technology Applications and Development team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which developed the site.

“The headlines often depict these close approaches as ‘dangerously’ close, but users will see by using Eyes just how distant most of these encounters really are.”

“We wanted Eyes on Asteroids to be as user-friendly as possible while telling the stories about humanity’s exploration of these fascinating objects,” said Craig.

“Every NEO can be found inside the app, as can most of the spacecraft that have visited these objects", he added.

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