Program: GN-2021B-Q-132

Asteroid and comet impacts with Earth are one of very few natural disasters that we currently have the possibility of preventing. To do so, we need to know the orbits of potentially hazardous objects with high precision and accuracy. Thus we request Target-of-Opportunity (ToO) time on Gemini North with GMOS-N and Gemini South with GMOS-S in imaging mode to obtain astrometry of 2 recently discovered high-priority near-Earth objects (NEOs) to reduce the uncertainty in our knowledge of their heliocentric orbital elements. The proposed observations would increase the total fraction of the NEOs' orbits that have been observed as well as the length of time that observations span. Our timely measurements will allow orbital dynamicists to refine the orbits and hopefully rule out possible impact(s). The specific NEOs have not been discovered yet, but will have the potential to impact Earth within 100yrs. We will select urgent targets as faint as V=25, which are too faint for our 1.8m and 0.9m telescopes.