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aecarol1 t1_iuiwon0 wrote

This is a serious issue. Not this specific asteroid in our lifetimes, but the idea that there are orbits that are mostly sunward and are hard to see asteroids in. It's a bit of a blind-spot from the vantage point of the Earth.

There was a mission planned a while back that would orbit the sun inside the orbit of Venus and look outward for Earth crossing asteroids. The idea was that being closer to the sun, most of the interesting asteroids would be well illuminated and easier to spot. I have no idea the status of this mission or if it's going to eventually fly.

When looking at the same asteroids from Earth, they are close enough to the sun that they are hard to see.

tl;dr asteroids that spend a lot of time close to the sun are hard to discover because of solar glare. Putting a probe closer to the sun looking "outward" may help find more of them.

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