Vera Rubin Observatory has already found thousands of new asteroids
In just 10 hours of observing the night sky, the powerful new telescope detected more than 2000 new asteroids, including a few that will pass near Earth
By James Dinneen
23 June 2025 Last updated 23 June 2025
Researchers identified and tracked newly discovered asteroids in images taken over 10 hours
NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory
The telescope was not primarily designed to detect near-Earth objects, but to conduct a decade-long survey expanding our view of the entire universe. But the same qualities that make it useful for that purpose are also good for asteroid detection: “You need to scan the sky very fast, with a very large field of view, for a long time,” said Ivezić.
