Thursday, August 13, 2009

Space Neighborhood needs watching

Blind Spots and Fuzzy Vision looking for Near-Earth Asteroids
Next Big Future

From New Scientist, existing sky surveys miss many asteroids smaller than 1 km across, leaving the door open to damaging impacts of Earth with little of no warning, a panel of scientists reports. Doing better will require devoting more powerful telescopes to asteroid hunting, but no one has committed the funds needed to do so, it says

NASA calculated, that to spot the asteroids as required by (Congressional mandate) would cost about $800 million between neo and 2020, either with a new ground-based telescope or a space observation system... If NASA (received) only $300 million, if could find most asteroids bigger than 1000 feet across..."

More from Next Big Picture
Download the Report from NAP.edu, or,
Mirror Site
(no registration necessary), HERE.

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