On 02/16/2016 09:54 PM, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Tue, 16 Feb 2016, David Weinshenker wrote:
So I'm thinking of something like an "asteroid belt survey swarm"
Version 2 would be the "redshirts" (Ensign Expendable)... intended to
record the orbits of stuff that's too small to see but big enough to
be a collision hazard
Too small to see from Earth, that is, but detectable at closer proximity.
Unfortunately, space is big. :-) Big enough that asteroids, even very
small ones, are a long way apart. You aren't likely to come close
enough to anything bigger than dust to detect it, let alone get any
useful data on it, unless it's big enough to be known in advance, so you
can explicitly aim for it.
