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NASA held a teleconference on Wednesday to mark the release of a multiagency report on how the U.S. government plans to deal with asteroids that could strike Earth. Although not all potentially threatening near-Earth objects have been found, NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and the National Science Foundation plan to invest in new telescopes capable of detecting more:
NASA is not going to be able to find all the asteroids big enough to cause serious devastation on Earth by 2020—or even 2033. Also: For a hypothetical attempt to send a spacecraft to divert an seriously dangerous incoming asteroid, we'll need a ten year heads-up to build it and get it to the asteroid.
The good news? They're working on it. "If a real threat does arise, we are prepared to pull together the information about what options might work and provide that information to decision-makers," Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer, told reporters.
The meat of the announcement today from was the conversion of a 2016 strategy document (pdf) produced by the Obama administration into a set of coordinated goals (pdf) across the government, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the Department of Energy. Sensible stuff— figuring out how better to track asteroids; predict their behavior; re-route or break them apart; and work better with international partners to routinely improve the world's ability to do this.
[...] NASA, under orders from Congress, is focused on finding asteroids bigger than 140 meters across—that is, those that are large enough to devastate an entire region. We still have a lot to do in that regard, per Johnson, who says that “we’ve found about 8,000 near-Earth asteroids at least 140 meters across, but two thirds of such objects remain to be discovered.”
[...] The amount of funds available for Planetary Protection is increasing, with the Trump administration requesting $150 million from lawmakers next year, mostly to fund a mission to demonstrate a spacecraft called DART that could deflect an Earth-bound asteroid. But strangely, Johnson would not discuss specific technologies for hunting asteroids during the media briefing on the report.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday June 22 2018, @12:03PM (2 children)
Sounds like a job for Space Force, or whatever the new military branch is going to be called again ... (as per usual; nothing less then Space Marines is not a proper option or answer)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @12:28PM
Sounds like the 1950s nuclear attack prep drills.
Better summarized as: stick your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday June 22 2018, @01:12PM
Exactly and the space fence is a good example why we need a space force as opposed to rando BS getting passed around.
The space fence (a big beautiful wall of 200 MHz radar) was originally a Navy project then tossed over the wall to the chair force in 04, then shut down in 2013 because contractors and retiring officers need more money and this weird side issue BS is where corruption usually lives.
So.. I kid you not, we have no operational space fence today, at least WRT unclassified fence, AFAIK.
I guess the new unclassified fence is going to be S band so ten times the resolution of the old fence, but still, its mostly "this aint our job so we'll corrupt the hell out of it for profit" type of project, that a dedicated Space Marines force would do a much better job of.