Efficiency of a wide-area survey in achieving short- and long-term warning for small impactors

We consider a network of telescopes capable of scanning all the observable sky each night and targeting Near-Earth objects (NEOs) in the size range of the Tunguska-like asteroids, from 160 m down to 10 m. We measure the performance of this telescope network in terms of the time needed to discover at least 50% of the impactors in the considered population with a warning time large enough to undertake proper mitigation actions. The warning times are described by a trimodal distribution and the telescope network has a 50% probability of discovering an impactor of the Tunguska class with at least one week of advance already in the first 10 yr of operations of the survey. These results suggest that the studied survey would be a significant addition to the current NEO discovery efforts.

► We discuss a Wide Survey targeting small NEOs, ranging between 10 and 160 m. ► The “blind time” is defined and used as a measure of the performances of a survey. ► We simulate 100 yr of operations, by using a population of 5000 impactors. ► A Wide Survey would be a significant addition to current NEO discovery efforts.