Telescopes guard the safety of the Earth. Observatories in Chile and Spain will watch the sky for potentially dangerous objects

Ground-based optical telescopes are used for a wide variety of astronomical tasks. And if it is often purely about science, the new European Southern Observatory (ESO) project is also focused on security.

The TBT2 (Test-Bed Telescope 2) telescope, located at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, is reportedly working with its twin brother TBT1 in Spain to help scientists search for asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth.

This project is a test platform for the future larger – Flyeye. As part of this project, several special telescopes will be built around the world, which will automatically search for potentially dangerous objects in space. The goal of this project is for astronomers to be able to detect any object larger than 40 meters by 2030 at least three weeks prior to collision.

Returning to TBT1 and TBT2, these telescopes will also conditionally operate independently. The software will schedule observations in real time and report the location and other parameters of the detected objects at the end of the day.