Friday, January 29th, 2010

Tracking Near-Earth Objects

The red dot at the center of this image is the first near-Earth asteroid discovered by NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

The US spends $4 million each year to search for comets or asteroids that could threaten the planet. That's not enough to get the job done, according to a new report from the National Research Council. In the newly-released report, "Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies," a panel of scientific advisers lays out options NASA could follow to detect more potentially threatening near-Earth objects, or NEOs. In 2005, Congress set out a 2020 deadline for NASA to complete a survey of nearby space and find 90 percent of near-Earth objects greater than 140-meters in diameter. That goal is in no way achievable at current spending levels, according to the report. We'll talk about some of the options considered by the panel.