Lately it seems that astronomers are discovering potentially harmful asteroids after they nearly miss our planet. This is because they’re coming from our planet’s “blind spot” – the space directly between the Earth and the Sun – and we can only see them after they pass. The European Space Agency is developing a new space-based observatory called Gaia, which will be able to see close to the Sun’s disk and detect many more of these previously unseen asteroids. Gaia is expected to launch in 2010.
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