Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System

acam1-400_smallThe Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) is being developed by a team of astronomers at the University of Hawaii and is funded by NASA. ATLAS is an asteroid impact early warning system consisting of two telescopes that will scan the whole sky several times every night looking for moving objects. Each telescope has a 10k x 10k STA1600 CCD and an Archon controller. When the project’s Haleakala and Mauna Loa sites are complete by early 2016, ATLAS can provide one day’s warning for a 30-kiloton “town killer,” a week for a 5-megaton “city killer,” and three weeks for a 100-megaton “county killer” asteroid. More information on ATLAS is available here.