Discovering Dangerous Asteroids with Pan-STARRS1

On 27 September 2019, in the framework of its environmental activities and more precisely in the space sector, the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) invited Dr Jedicke from the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, for a talk at its premises in Belvaux.

Space applications produce and depend more and more on big volumes of data. Dr. Jedicke's talk gave an example on how asteroid detection and the processing of big data are related. At the University, he was the development manager of their Moving Object Processing System for the Pan-STARRS telescope on Maui that is now the world’s leading discovery system for asteroids and comets. His current research interests involve studies related to in-space resource utilization of asteroids to provide water as fuel for spacecraft missions

Focus on Pan-STARRS1

The Pan-STARRS1 telescope on the summit of Haleakala, Maui, has been the leading discovery system for potentially hazardous asteroids for the past seven years.  The ambitious Pan-STARRS design process that began over fifteen years ago envisioned gigapixel cameras collecting terrabytes of data each night and accumulating petabytes of information over the course of its ten years of operations. 

Together with the workshop participants, Dr Jedicke discussed on the early design phases of this telescope system with a primary focus on the challenges involved in the Moving Object Processing Subsystem and provide some of the science highlights since the start of this decade.