ATLAS

ATLAS is NASA’s operational early warning network for hazardous near-Earth objects, developed and operated by the University of Hawaiʻi. It scans enormous sky area at high cadence to find small impactors with days to weeks of warning. DFM designed and built the f/2.0, 7.4° wide-field optical systems at the core of each telescope, delivering the étendue, uniform image quality, and focus stability that make survey data reliable at scale.

Mission:  Last Alert Before Impact

ATLAS is not a general-purpose observatory. It is a dedicated planetary defense system designed to detect small impactors with days to weeks of warning, support civil defense decision-making, and refine our understanding of near-Earth small-body populations.
Operational reality is simple. Survey success depends on repeatable image quality across thousands of pointings, and on astrometry and photometry that remain stable as the night cools. DFM’s role is to protect the optical behavior that makes the data trustworthy.

The Enabling Hardware: Fast Optics Plus a Wide, Corrected Field

ATLAS relies on optics that combine very fast focal ratios with a large, corrected field. At f/2.0, small focus shifts broaden the PSF and bias centroids. ATLAS protects measurement consistency by stabilizing the optical prescription mechanically rather than relying on constant refocusing, keeping the survey pipeline fed with uniform data.

DFM’s optical assemblies are built to deliver wide-field image quality suitable for large-format detectors and pipeline-grade measurements. The aim is not a peak lab result. The aim is repeatable performance across the full observing program.

• Learn More: Focus Stability. Why holding focus matters more than finding it.

From Planetary Defense to Space Domain Awareness

Although ATLAS was built for planetary defense, its survey behavior aligns directly with modern Space Domain Awareness (SDA) needs. Wide-area discovery, time-domain characterization, and statistical sampling of faint populations are the same design problems SDA faces when optical speed, field of view, and cadence must work as one system.

ATLAS demonstrates that wide-field survey nodes can run reliably night after night as production infrastructure, and that optics are not merely a component - they are the capability.

• Learn More:  Space Domain Awareness - From survey cadence to custody cadence. Same engineering.

Science and Mission Highlights

ATLAS has become one of the most productive time-domain survey systems in operation, translating high étendue and cadence into actionable awareness in a dynamic sky.

Highlights Include:

• Planetary defense discoveries
  More than 1,315 near-Earth asteroids, over 112 potentially hazardous asteroids, and about 111 comets identified to date, with discoveries flowing directly into the Minor Planet Center and JPL’s Scout system so impact probabilities can be evaluated quickly.
• Third known interstellar object:
  3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1) was discovered by the Chilean ATLAS telescope, only the third confirmed interstellar object, on a strongly hyperbolic orbit that constrains the properties of small bodies passing through the Solar System from interstellar space.
• DART impact imaging for planetary defense
  Time-sequence imaging of NASA’s DART impact into Dimorphos, providing wide-field ground based context on plume evolution and ejecta dynamics that complements spacecraft and space telescope data and helps quantify the momentum transfer achieved.
• ATLAS variable-star catalogs
  ATLAS-VAR produced about 4.7 million candidate variables from light curves of roughly 140 million stars with at least 100 observations each. The first main catalog lists hundreds of thousands of probable variables, including over 300,000 new objects across pulsators, eclipsing binaries, and irregular variables, supporting broad studies of stellar evolution and variability.
• Young supernovae and fast transients
  ATLAS contributes at global scale to transient discovery. The ATLAS project lists over 5,000 supernovae in its discovery totals.  With wide sky coverage and a roughly two-day cadence, ATLAS ranks among the top global contributors to the IAU Transient Name Server, with hundreds of supernova candidates per year. It also discovers cataclysmic variables, stellar outbursts, gamma-ray burst afterglows, and other fast optical events, and participates in LIGO follow up to search for neutron-star merger counterparts.