Please answer the following question: Information: - 118401 LINEAR ( provisional designation 1999 RE70 ) is an asteroid and main - belt comet ( 176P/LINEAR ) that was discovered by the Lincoln Near - Earth Asteroid Research ( LINEAR ) 1 - metre telescopes in Socorro , New Mexico on September 7 , 1999 . ( 118401 ) LINEAR was discovered to be cometary on November 26 , 2005 , by Henry H. Hsieh and David C. Jewitt as part of the Hawaii Trails project using the Gemini North 8 - m telescope on Mauna Kea and was confirmed by the University of Hawaii 's 2.2 - m ( 88 - in ) telescope on December 24 -- 27 , 2005 , and Gemini on December 29 , 2005 . Observations using the Spitzer Space Telescope have resulted in an estimate of 4.0 0.4 km for the diameter of ( 118401 ) LINEAR . The main - belt comets are unique in that they have flat ( within the plane of the planets ' orbits ) , approximately circular ( small eccentricity ) , asteroid - like orbits , and not the elongated , often tilted orbits characteristic of all other comets . Because ( 118401 ) LINEAR can generate a coma ( produced by vapour boiled off the comet ) , it must be an icy asteroid . When a typical comet approaches the Sun , its ice heats up and sublimates ( changes directly from ice to gas ) , venting gas and dust into space , creating a tail and giving the object a fuzzy appearance . Far from the Sun , sublimation stops , and the remaining ice stays frozen until the comet 's next pass close to the Sun. In contrast , objects in the asteroid belt have essentially circular orbits and are expected to be mostly baked dry of ice by their confinement to the inner Solar System ( see extinct comet ) . It is suggested that these main - belt asteroid - comets are evidence of a recent impact exposing an icy interior to solar radiation . A good question is , '' How long will current main - belt comets keep generating a coma ? '' It is estimated short - period comets remain active for about 10,000 years before having most of their ice sublimated away and going dormant . Four other objects are classified as both... - Socorro is a city in Socorro County in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is in the Rio Grande Valley at an elevation of . In 2012 the population was 8,906. It is the county seat of Socorro County. Socorro is located south of Albuquerque and north of Las Cruces. - The Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project is a collaboration of the United States Air Force, NASA, and the MIT's Lincoln Laboratory for the systematic detection and tracking of near-Earth objects. LINEAR was responsible for the majority of asteroid discoveries from 1998 until it was overtaken by the Catalina Sky Survey in 2005. , LINEAR had detected 231,082 new small Solar System bodies, of which at least 2,423 were near-Earth asteroids and 279 were comets. The instruments used by the LINEAR program are located at Lincoln Laboratory's Experimental Test Site (ETS) on the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) near Socorro, New Mexico. - The Spitzer Space Telescope (SST), formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), is an infrared space telescope launched in 2003. It is the fourth and final of the NASA Great Observatories program. After reading the paragraphs above, we are interested in knowing the entity with which '118401 linear' exhibits the relationship of 'site of astronomical discovery'. Find the answer from the choices below. Choices: - lincoln laboratory - socorro - spitzer space telescope
A:
lincoln laboratory