Overview
- Rubin researchers submitted an unprecedented batch to the IAU Minor Planet Center, which maintains the global minor‑planet database, with detections spanning over 11,000 newly identified asteroids and more than 80,000 previously known bodies.
- The haul includes 33 near‑Earth objects, which orbit close to the Sun, and none pose a threat to Earth, with the largest measuring about 1,640 feet wide.
- Teams also found roughly 380 trans‑Neptunian objects beyond Neptune during less than two months of early imaging.
- About a million measurements fed Rubin’s 8.4‑meter telescope, 3.2‑gigapixel camera, and new detection software, which link faint moving points of light to determine orbits at high speed.
- NSF projections say the full survey could uncover about 90,000 more near‑Earth objects and nearly double the count of larger ones, boosting planetary‑defense warning times.