Deadly asteroid impacts on our planet are the stuff of disaster movies and novels.
And while the odds of an asteroid slamming into Earth and altering life on our planet are small, it could still happen. That’s why NASA set a goal of working to detect at least 90 percernt of all deadly asteroids by the year 2020 a few years ago.
However, the program may be in danger of running out of funding by the year 2013 according to a new report in Wired.
Congress has mandated that NASA be able to detect at least 90 percent of dangerous space objects that are at least a kilometer (.6 miles) wide. However, it appears that Congress isn’t willing to put their money where their mouth is and without an increase in funding, NASA won’t be able to fulfill the mandate according to a new report from the National Academy of Sciences.
Meeting that goal “may require the building of one or more additional observatories, possibly including a space-based observatory,” according to the report.
The committee that investigated the issue noted that the United States is getting little help from the rest of the world on this front, and isn’t likely to any time soon.
Another report on steps that should be taken if such a object were detected will be made public later this year.
Why do we need to track asteroids when we have Ben Afflack and Bruce Willis to save us? I’m sure we can launch a mission to save earth in two weeks time, just like the movie.
Phhh… Early alert and science…. Who needs it when we have the film industry to same us all.
*Michael is going to sit in a corner and rock himself to sleep now.*