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Assessing the Vera Rubin Observatory’s Ability to Discover Asteroid Impactors before They Collide with Earth

  • Authors: Qifeng Cheng, Daniel Scolnic, Jacob A. Kurlander, Ian Chow, Maryann Benny Fernandes

Qifeng Cheng et al 2026 The Astronomical Journal 171 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 2.

Size distribution and discovery efficiency of the synthetic impactor population, computed using uniform 10 m diameter bins up to 140 m and a collapsed terminal bin for all objects larger than 140 m. Top: log-scaled histograms showing the full population (dark brown) and the subset discovered by LSST (red). A break in the x-axis isolates the >140 m population corresponding to the PHA hazard regime. Bottom: discovery fraction (Discovered/All) for the same size-bin setup.

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