Reply to post: So it's not about spotting it in the first place.

City-obliterating asteroid screamed past Earth the other night – and boffins only clocked it just 26 hours beforehand

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

So it's not about spotting it in the first place.

It's about spotting it long enough to get orbital parameters.

Then updating them to walk its path through time

To see if it comes close to Earth.

And (unfortunately) there are a lot of objects that size.

BTW IIRC 20km/s is faster than the fastest probe humans have ever launched from Earth.

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