NASA may be asked to better monitor asteroids

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Nov 9, 2007 | by Bill Theobald Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON -- NASA could be asked to submit a more specific report on how to identify asteroids and other objects with the potential to crash into Earth.

Dissatisfaction with the space agency's original report, released in March, prompted a hearing Thursday by a House subcommittee that featured testimony from a former astronaut and astronomical experts. They offered prodding and suggestions for how more could be done to monitor asteroids that pass near the Earth.

"We are dealing with a very real threat," said Rep. Tom Feeney, R- Fla., ranking minority member of the space subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Technology.

Scientists estimate 20,000 objects, mostly asteroids, are potentially hazardous because they are at least about 459 feet in diameter and come within about 4.6 million miles of Earth. So far, 900 have been identified.

NASA, under its 2005 congressional reauthorization, was ordered to develop a plan to identify and track 90 percent of these objects by 2020.

But its March report called for the agency to continue what it already was doing and stated that due to current budget constraints, NASA cannot initiate a new program at this time.

Former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, chairman of an organization studying ways to alter the paths of asteroids, was the witness most critical of NASA and the report.

Schweickart testified NASA should launch a mission to test methods of diverting an asteroid. Among the options are detonating a bomb on or near the asteroid or sending a spacecraft near it to use the ship's gravitational pull to alter the asteroid's orbit.

"We are not talking here about science," the Apollo 9 lunar module pilot said of the issue. "What we are talking about here is public safety." He also called for one agency of government -- possibly NASA -- to be given overall responsibility for identifying and tracking the asteroids as well as developing ways to prevent an Earth collision.P>

On the Web: science.house.gov, House Committee on Science and Technology.

neo.jpl.nasa.gov, Near Earth Object program.