Speaker
Description
Rapidly estimating recently discovered hazardous asteroids' physical properties, such as rotation rate, surface composition, size, and albedo, provides a suitable practice for improving planetary defense techniques by acquiring these measurements hours or days after their discoveries. In this talk, we will present simultaneous optical and mid-infrared observations of recently discovered near-Earth Objects (NEOs) using the Mid-Infrared Spectrograph and Imager (MIRSI) and the MIRSI Optical Camera (MOC) integrated at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF). We will discuss the observability selection, diameter, and albedo estimations of recently discovered NEOs such as 2023 GM, 2023 SP1, 2023 DZ2, and 2024 CG2. We characterized these NEOs days or hours after their discovery confirmation. We will also discuss some of the limitations of performing a rapid-response characterization of these objects with ground-based facilities such as the NASA IRTF.
