It is crucial to discover and track asteroids for planetary defense against killer asteroids. In addition, it provides astronomers with detailed information about the universe. It has now been demonstrated that a new algorithm called THOR can find asteroids, which helps in this process. Astrodynamics, the Asteroid Institute's cloud-based platform, has been used for identifying and tracking asteroids.

A new algorithm developed by UW researchers has proved effective in discovering asteroids in our solar system. In recent weeks, the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center has confirmed that the algorithm used to identify asteroids - called Tracklist-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery, or THOR - is accurate.

THOR is being used by the Asteroid Institute to identify and track asteroids on its cloud-based astrodynamics platform - ADAM, or Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping. Researchers using the Asteroid Institute's resources can submit thousands of additional new discoveries once the Minor Planet Center confirms these asteroids and adds them to its registry.

Matthew Holman, dynamicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and the former director of the Minor Planet Center, said that a comprehensive map of the solar system gives astronomers vital insights for science and defense. The use of trackless algorithms such as THOR greatly expands the kinds of datasets that can be used to build such a map.

THOR was co-created by Mario Jurić, an astronomy professor at the University of Washington and director of the DiRAC Institute, and Joachim Moeyens, a graduate student in astronomy at UW.

The Astronomical Journal published a paper last year in which they and their UW collaborators unveiled THOR. Different sky images contain points of light associated with asteroid orbits. THOR doesn't require that the telescope observe the sky in a particular pattern to find asteroids, unlike current state-of-the-art codes.

Juri*, who is also a senior data science fellow with UW's eScience Institute, said the Asteroid Institute's work is critical because astronomers are reaching the limit of what can be discovered with current techniques and telescopes. "We are pleased to work with the Asteroid Institute to enable mapping of our solar system using Google Cloud."

The discovery of asteroids can now be systematically explored with large datasets that could not previously be utilized. By tracking asteroids, THOR identifies asteroids, calculates their orbits, and most importantly, notifies the Minor Planet Center about them.

A 30-day window of images from the NOIRLab Source Catalog was inspected by Moeyens, who submitted a small initial subset of discoveries taken by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory between 2012 and 2019. Thousands of new discoveries are expected now that the computational discovery technique has been validated using the catalog and other datasets.

Ed Lu, executive director of the Asteroid Institute, said finding and tracking asteroids is essential to understanding our solar system, developing space technology, and protecting our planet from asteroid impacts. "Thor running on ADAM allows any telescope with an archive to become an asteroid search telescope.