NASA is putting the number of potentially hazardous asteroids and comets at 20,000 in a report that will be released later this week, according to an AP story now circulating. And the report, reviewed at a Planetary Defense Conference in Washington yesterday, pegs the cost of finding 90 percent of these objects at $1 billion. That’s bad news for those worried about Earth-crossers. For AP quotes NASA Ames director Simon Worden: “We know what to do; we just don’t have the money.”
And as Larry Klaes wrote me this morning, “But just imagine the bill after a big space rock hits Earth.” NASA is already tracking some 769 objects in a search now described as behind schedule. From the story:
One solution would be to build a new ground telescope solely for the asteroid hunt, and piggyback that use with other agencies’ telescopes for a total of $800 million. Another would be to launch a space infrared telescope that could do the job faster for $1.1 billion. But NASA program scientist Lindley Johnson said NASA and the White House called both those choices too costly.
A cheaper option would be to simply piggyback on other agencies’ telescopes, a cost of about $300 million, also rejected, Johnson said.
“The decision of the agency is we just can’t do anything about it right now,” he added.
Deflection, which we often discuss in these pages, isn’t an option for objects we never see in the first place. Shouldn’t asteroid tracking receive higher budgetary priority? The public, perhaps jaded by alarmist rhetoric on too many fronts, seems to perceive this as only a science fiction scenario. Yet the real dimension of the threat won’t be known until we map the dangerous Earth-crossing materials and know where we stand.
We have already received a warning shot from the Cosmos:
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2007/03/05/599903-home-gets-hit-with-suspected-meteorite
SL9 slamming into Jupiter wasn’t science fiction. When i was in Philadelphia, the public was invited to the Franklin Institute to see it in one of their two 20 inch class scopes. I saw the “G” spot. It was bigger than the Earth.
It’s funny, but the pieces of SL9 seemed to hit Jupiter in alphabetical order.
Even more bizarre – people in my local paper seem to DIE in
alphabetical order too!
The $1B figure seems very high to me. Surveys like Pan-STARRS should be able to find most of these threatening objects (they claim it can find all1 km threatening objects and most of the 300 m ones). But of course NASA would like to have a space telescope for it.
Could Venus watch for Earth-bound asteroids?
17:25 09 March 2007
NewScientist.com news service
David L Chandler
A dedicated space-based telescope is needed to achieve a congressionally mandated goal of discovering 90% of all near-Earth asteroids down to a size of 140 metres by the year 2020, says a report NASA sent to the US Congress on Thursday. Asteroids of that size are large enough to destroy a major city or region if they strike the planet – but NASA says it does not have the money to pay for the project.
The study says Venus is the best place for the telescope. That is because space rocks within Earth’s orbit – where Venus lies – are most likely to be lost in the Sun’s glare, potentially catching astronomers off guard. The telescope could be placed either behind or ahead of Venus in its orbit by about 60° – the stable Lagrange points, known as L4 or L5, where the gravity of the Sun and Venus are in balance.
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn11356-could-venus-watch-for-earthbound-asteroids.html