This isn't news any more (it was published in February), but Paul Dietz had a post that I just found out about describing a new asteroid-hunting scheme that seems very promising:

All NEOs down to a few hundred meters in diameter will be found. If any are possibly going to hit Earth soon, we'll know.

Good. We can't do this too soon.

Totally cool

I can't wait until I can get a gigapixel camera to take backpacking!!

:)

Dennis

Thanks for the link. :)

The 'all' in that quote should be understood in a statistical sense, since the detection rate will decline with time, and at some point the benefit (from avoided expected impact damage and from the science returns) may not justify additional observing time. I think they expect to detect 99% of the impact-relevant NEOs.

The link to the PanSTARRS-1 project status still says "first light early 2006", but now that we're in 2006 Q2, still no word on if they've got it up and running yet, unfortunately. I was hoping for some cool images already captured by PS1.

And, yes, Paul, the relative value will likely diminish over time as we asymptotically approach 100% detection, but I think it would still be worth keeping our eyes open for asteroids shot at us from distant galaxies by hostile extraterrestrial forces (a la StarShip Troopers). Or, more realistically, for any future extra-solar comets that decide it's time to enter our sun's gravity well as they're passing by.

Like most space missions, I'm pretty sure that the operations costs for this device will be much lower than the development cost, and once people start seeing all it can do they'll come up with other things for it to do as well. In the meantime, NEO and other discoveries can continue in the background.

The dirty little secret about this is that it is funded by the USAF. And they're not interested in asteroids.

So it will probably keep running for quite awhile.

Why is that a "dirty" secret, Tom?

"Why is that a "dirty" secret, Tom?"

It's a figure of speech. Lighten up.