HERE’S HOW THAT SPACE PROGRAM IS COMING ALONG: The Rubin Observatory found 2,104 asteroids in just a few days. It could soon find millions more.

First of all, to put it simply, with just a few nights of data, the Rubin Observatory team was able to identify 2,104 never-before-seen asteroids in our solar system — seven of which are categorized as near-Earth objects. (No, none are expected to strike our planet. Don’t worry). For context, there are approximately a million known asteroids in our cosmic neighborhood; over the next few years, Rubin could very well hike that figure up to five million.

“This is five times more than all the astronomers in the world discovered during the last 200 years since the discovery of the first asteroid,” Željko Ivezić, Deputy Director of Rubin’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time, said during the conference. “We can outdo two centuries of effort in just a couple of years.”

This is astonishing in itself — talk about an exemplary first impression — but there’s still that second thing that makes Rubin’s new asteroid data incredible.

They can be formatted as movies.
…
This feature of Rubin should be huge not only because it’d allow scientists to better study asteroid movements and discover new near-Earth objects, but also for humanity’s efforts in planetary defense.

Well, good.