Quebec: Canada is planning to launch a satellite in 2010 for tracking wayward asteroids that may pose a threat to Earth.

The Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) would have a 15-cm telescope and weigh about 65 kg. It is designed to hunt for asteroids and monitor satellites orbiting the Earth, LiveScience.com reported.

Telescopes on ground suffer from limitations even when skies are clear as the atmosphere makes it harder to spot the faint light signals from asteroids.

NEOSSat reduces the background interference to one tenth of that on Earth as it would be positioned roughly 700 km above the atmosphere.

"That's why a small telescope in space can be a lot more comparable to a large telescope on the ground," said Alan Hildebrand, planetary scientist at the University of Calgary and head of the asteroid search project for NEOSSat.

The $12 million microsatellite would also keep an eye on Earth's satellite traffic for both US and Canadian space commands, swivelling around to target space rocks and satellites hundreds of times a day using a revolutionary turning system.