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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday June 30 2015, @11:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the overlooked-and-underfunded dept.

Asteroid threats seems only taken seriously when the last close call is fresh in memory. But it didn't last long enough to establish consistent funding. On March 23, 1989, when an asteroid 300 meters in diameter called 1989FC passed within 684 000 kilometers from Earth. New York Times wrote, "In cosmic terms, it was a close call." This event also woke up the powers that were after this arguably close brush with total annihilation. The US Congress asked NASA to prepare a report on the threat posed by asteroids. The document from 1992, "The Spaceguard Survey: Report of the NASA International Near-Earth-Object Detection Workshop," was rather bleak.

If a large Near-Earth Object (NEO) were to hit the Earth, the report said, its denizens could look forward to acid rain, firestorms, and an impact winter induced by dust being thrown kilometers into the stratosphere. After reports from the National Research Council made it clear that meeting the discovery requirement outlined in the Congressional mandate was impossible given the lack of program funding, NEOO got a tenfold budget increase from 2009 to 2014. Yet it still faces a number of difficulties. An audit of the program released September 2014 described the NEOO program as "a one-man operation that is poorly integrated and lacking in objectives and oversight".


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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 30 2015, @11:56PM

    by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday June 30 2015, @11:56PM (#203574) Journal

    Actually the Hiroshima device was 12-15 kton TNT and asfair the standard device currently is circa 2 Mton TNT so it's not really a good comparison. But yeah still "small" NEOs are a scourge. But they perhaps a smaller landing of such object will prove to be a proper incentive to get people in a position of decision of their asses. But considering the profession that usually populate governments. They will simple outlaw it and it will be gone :D

    So perhaps the best hope given the circumstances is a small enough NEO that provides a proper lesson in space realities but still not big enough to damage the civilization at large.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:24AM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:24AM (#203583) Journal

    We've had these all along.

    But they are rare, and likely to get more rare as time goes on. (Or so says I've heard).

    In fact we just finished counting all the impacters of significant size:
          http://news.sciencemag.org/earth/2015/06/earths-colossal-crater-count-complete [sciencemag.org]

    In 2014, Johnson led a similar study, which found that for craters 85 kilometers in diameter and larger, the geologic record ought to be complete. Based on the rate of impacts and the age of the crust, his team predicted eight craters this size, and there are six or seven that have been confirmed.

    Now, Stefan Hergarten and Thomas Kenkmann, geophysicists at the University of Freiburg in Germany, have taken the analysis further and found that the documented record is complete down to much smaller impact craters. For the 70 craters larger than 6 kilometers across, the record is complete, they say: There are no more to be found,

    This apparently includes Sea impacts over most of the oceans.

    Paywalled: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X15003659 [sciencedirect.com]

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    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:46AM

      by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:46AM (#203593) Journal

      The important NEOs are those that perhaps will impact Earth not the ones that has. And humans in general may need a live lesson to get the message.