Wants Agency To Fund Search For Smaller NEOs

Seems there are more than a few fans of the movies "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" in the halls of Congress. On Thursday, lawmakers derided NASA for not spending enough to detect "Near-Earth Objects" (NEOs).

Scott Pace, head of program analysis and evaluation at NASA, testified before a congressional hearing the risk of a NEO slamming into Earth is too small to divert the space agency's limited resources, now being spent primarily to complete the International Space Station and develop the Constellation manned space program.

Pace told lawmakers the agency couldn't do more to detect NEOs "given the constrained resources and the strategic objectives NASA already has been tasked with."

The threatened 2011 closure of the Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico served as a focal point for lawmakers who chided NASA for not properly funding efforts to track objects in space.

"We're talking about minimal expense compared to the cost of having to absorb this type of damage," California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said, reports Agence-France Presse. "After all, it may be the entire planet that is destroyed!"

"We must take action now to enhance our awareness to prevent a catastrophe," Puerto Rico delegate Luis Fortuno said, also noting cutting off funding would take away funds from the impoverished US territory.

Members of the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee pointed to the small asteroid Apophis, which may come perilously close to Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029... and even closer in 2036. NASA states there is a one in 45,000 chance Apophis could hit the planet then, saying the 273-yards-wide asteroid would have to pass through the equivalent of a "gravitational keyhole" for that to happen.

"It's a very unlikely situation and one we can drive to zero, probably," said Donald Yeomans, manager of the NEO program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Even if Arecibo is closed, NASA says the bulk of NEO monitoring will be picked up by four smaller radio telescopes now under construction in Hawaii by the US Air Force.

NASA only tracks NEOs larger than one kilometer in diameter -- large enough to cause a global disaster, though not so big it would destroy the planet, per se. "Extinction-class" objects -- like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago -- measure at least 10 kilometers in diameter.

Congress attacked NASA for not answering its 2005 mandate to expand the search for smaller NEOs, at least 140 meters in diameter, saying the agency's annual NEO budget of $4.1 million was not enough to cover such a search. NASA says there are about 20,000 smaller objects that could potentially strike Earth.

FMI: www.nasa.gov, http://science.house.gov