Detection and Discovery of Near-Earth Asteroids by the LINEAR Program

■ The Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program, which applies space surveillance technology developed for the U.S. Air Force to discovering asteroids, has been operating for five years. During that time LINEAR has provided almost 65% of the worldwide discovery stream and has now discovered 50% of all known asteroids, including near-earth asteroids whose orbital parameters could allow them to pass close to the earth. In addition, LINEAR has become the leading ground-based discoverer of comets, with more than one hundred comets now named “LINEAR.” Generally, LINEAR discovers comets when they are far away from the sun on their inbound trajectory, thus allowing observation of the heating process commonly missed previously when comets were discovered closer to the sun. This article provides an update to recent enhancements of the LINEAR system, details the productivity of the program, and highlights some of the more interesting objects discovered.