Asteroids have been smashing into Earth since the days of the dinosaurs. And it is possible that a massive space rock could threaten life as we know it. That’s why the development of THOR systems is so valuable. It is being recognized as “next-generation asteroid and comet discovery algorithms” which reveals what’s out there and what is heading in our direction.
In May 2021, DIRAC (Institute for Data-Intensive Research in Astrophysics & Cosmology) published a pre-print detailing the THOR or “Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery” algorithm.
And on Tuesday, former astronaut and executive director of The Asteroid Institute, Ed Lu, and Danica Remy, B612 President released information about THOR’s first successful demonstration.
“From this Moeyens submitted a small, initial subset of discoveries to the Minor Planet Center for official recognition and validation. Now that the computational discovery technique has been validated, thousands of discoveries from NSC and other datasets are expected to follow. “
THOR views Space with an algorithm
THOR stands for Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery. And it is being used to discover asteroids that have been overlooked and to track their trajectory in space.
