Wikipedia
[[Image:Neo-chart.png|thumb|240px|Number of NEOs detected by various projects:
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The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) consists of astronomical cameras, telescopes and a computing facility that is surveying the sky for moving objects on a continual basis, including accurate astrometry and photometry of already detected objects. By detecting differences from previous observations of the same areas of the sky, it is expected to discover a very large number of new asteroids, comets, variable stars and other celestial objects. Its primary mission is to detect near-Earth objects that threaten impact events and is expected to create a database of all objects visible from Hawaii (three-quarters of the entire sky) down to apparent magnitude 24. Pan-STARRS is funded in large part by the United States Air Force through their Research Labs. Pan-STARRS NEO survey searches all the sky north of declination −47.5.
The first Pan-STARRS telescope (PS1) is located at the summit of Haleakalā on Maui, Hawaii, and went online on December 6, 2008, under the administration of the University of Hawaii. PS1 began full-time science observations on May 13, 2010, and the PS1 Science Mission is underway, with operations funded by the PS1 Science Consortium, PS1SC, a consortium including the Max Planck Society in Germany, National Central University in Taiwan, Edinburgh, Durham and Queen's Belfast Universities in the UK, and Johns Hopkins and Harvard Universities in the United States and the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network. Consortium observations for the all sky (as visible from Hawaii) survey were completed in April 2014.
The Pan-STARRS Project is a collaboration between the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Maui High Performance Computing Center and Science Applications International Corporation. Telescope construction is funded by the U.S. Air Force. Having completed PS1, the Pan-STARRS Project is now focusing on building PS2, for which first light was achieved in 2013, with full science operations scheduled for 2014 and then the full array of four telescopes, sometimes called PS4. Completing the array of four telescopes is estimated at a total cost of US$100 million for the entire array.
As of mid-2014, PS2 was in the process of being commissioned. In the wake of substantial funding problems, no clear timeline existed for additional telescopes beyond the second.