Telescope Will Keep an Eye Peeled for Asteroids
Arizona’s Lowell Observatory, known for the discovery of Pluto in 1930, will add a new telescope to its Flagstaff site. The new 4-meter survey telescope could speed the discovery of Earth-threatening asteroids and the search for thousands of Kuiper Belt objects near Pluto.
The $30-million Discovery Channel Telescope, built in partnership with Discovery Communications Inc., is expected to be finished in 2008.
Lowell officials said that their telescope could detect up to 2,300 near-Earth asteroids -- as many as have been found in the last decade -- in just a single month.
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