My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Josh Hogan was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Ursa Major with our small but mighty Schmidt telescope when he spotted a fast moving point of light in a set of his images and posted his observations on the Near Earth Object Confirmation Page or NEOCP for short. The NASA Sentry software system automatically scans the NEOCP and from the initial observations of Josh’s discovery predicted there was a tiny minuscule but non zero chance that it could impact our home planet in the next 100 years. Asteroid hunters were able to show that 2026 GB is not a threat only after they had accumulated enough data to accurately determine its orbit which demonstrates that planetary defense is by necessity an international effort.

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