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Edna DeVore, the SETI Institute Director of Education and Outreach, says that bigger is not better when it comes to telescopes used for searching for asteroids in an article for Space.com. Apparently it's a question that SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, are asked frequently. "Why aren't you using this telescope to search for asteroids?". The plain fact of the matter, explains DeVore, is that the largest telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the great Hale Telescope on Mount Palomar in California and the Keck Telescope in Hawaii are too large to be used in the search for NEOs. Although such telescopes can provide clear, high resolution images of faint, distant objects they can see only a very small fraction of the sky and thus are not useful in identifying new asteroids and comets. It would be like crossing the road using a pair of binoculars to look left and right, it really would be best to see the whole road, both ways, before crossing.
A similar question, asked frequently to the NEO Information Centre, is "Why can't we just use Radar to find all the asteroids?". The answer is that Radar, although an excellent technique for studying asteroids in detail when close to the Earth, has a limited range and many asteroids and comets spend most of their time moving far from Earth. The light seen in optical telescopes, however, shines across galaxies and the universe, and can be used to find even faint asteroids and comets that are moving against the backdrop of the stars. Radar studies of Asteroids are described in more detail on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Radar Research Site.
More info: Space.com
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