A

David

Darling

Spacewatch Project

Spacewatch Project is a project the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory founded in 1980 to explore the various populations of small objects in the Solar System, especially Centaurs, Trojans, main belt asteroids, trans-Neptunian objects, and near-Earth objects, in order to better understand their dynamical evolution. Spacewatch also finds potential targets for interplanetary spacecraft missions, provides follow-up astrometry of such targets, and finds objects that might present a hazard to the Earth. CCD-scanning observations are carried out the Steward Observatory's original 0.9-meter Spacewatch telescope and the new 1.8-meter Spacewatch telescope, both on Kitt Peak. The program has discovered more than 300 new near-Earth asteroids and many thousands of new objects in the main belt and beyond.