Canadian microsat to look for near-earth asteroids

Canada is preparing to launch the first space mission ever to search for asteroids between Earth and the sun -- the type of asteroid most likely to slam into our planet.

Fittingly for this country, the Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite is not a Hubble-sized monster. It's a 60-kilogram microsatellite, costing a mere $10 million, yet able to deliver science results never seen before.

NEOSSat will search for asteroids that are closer to the sun than Earth. These are nearly impossible to see from our planet's surface -- there's too much atmosphere and sunshine -- but easier to spot from space.

canada.com - Canada space mission targets asteroids - May 02, 2008

Since newspaper science articles are notoriously bad at accurately explaining things, you can also read

The Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) Mission Enables an Efficient Space-Based Survey (NESS Project) of Interior-to-Earth-Orbit (IEO) Asteroids (PDF)
by
Hildebrand A.R., Tedesco E.F., Carroll K.A., Cardinal R.D., Matthews J.M., Kuschnig R., Walker G.A.H., Gladman, B., Kaiser, N.R., Brown P.G., Larson S.M., Worden, S.P., Wallace, B.J., Cho-das P.W., Muinonen K., Cheng A., Gural P.
from Lunar and Planetary Science XXXVIII (2007)

I couldn't find a Wikipedia article for it, so I made one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_Earth_Object_Surveillance_Satellite

Obscure historical sidebar: B. Gladman was also a student of my grad astrophysics supervisor.  A much, much better student.