Scientists built a 3-ton camera with a 5-foot-wide lens to discover hazardous asteroids that NASA can’t see [Video]

The world’s largest digital camera is finally complete in a laboratory in Menlo Park, California.

The SUV-sized Legacy Survey of Space and Time, or LSST, Camera weighs about 6,200 pounds — roughly 3 metric tons — and its front lens is more than 5 feet wide.

The LSST camera has to be that big to achieve its mission of taking a 10-year digital survey of the entire southern sky, scanning the whole area every few nights, eventually creating the largest astronomical movie ever.

“No one has ever looked at so much of the universe so frequently,” Aaron Roodman, the deputy director of Rubin Construction for SLAC and camera-program lead, told Business Insider.

LSST isn’t just a fun project to break records, though. Among its breakthrough science goals, the camera can also track down large, city-killer-sized asteroids so that NASA …