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NASA penny-pinching risks exposing humankind to a planetary catastrophe if a big enough asteroid evades detection and slams into Earth , US lawmakers warned Thursday. But the US space agency said the chances of a new "Near-Earth Object" (NEO) like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs were too remote to divert scarce resources. Scott Pace, head of program analysis and evaluation at NASA, said the agency could not do more to detect NEOs "given the constrained resources and the strategic objectives NASA already has been tasked with." Pace and other NASA officials were grilled at a congressional hearing on the existing NEO program, which seized the public imagination in the late 1990s through the movies "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact." Lawmakers decried the threatened closure of a giant radio telescope in Puerto Rico run with NASA's assistance that is the world's foremost facility for tracking space objects. "We're talking about minimal expense compared to the cost of having to absorb this type of damage," Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said. "After all, it may be the entire planet that is destroyed! " Source : Yahoo Science News
Puerto Rico delegate Luis Fortuno fretted over the economic impact on his impoverished US territory, but also warned of the broader consequences for the entire planet. "We must take action now to enhance our awareness to prevent a catastrophe," he told the hearing. The National Science Foundation has earmarked the Arecibo Observatory, which featured in science-fiction movie "Contact" and the James Bond installment "Goldeneye," for closure after 2011 if new private-sector money is not found. NASA officials said they would get by with new monitoring systems, including a network of four telescopes being built in Hawaii by the US Air Force. Critics say NASA has imposed big cuts on many research programs in a bid to meet President George W. Bush's goal of returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020 and use it as a stepping stone for manned missions to Mars and beyond. The hearing of the House of Representatives space and aeronautics subcommittee highlighted one small asteroid named Apophis, about 250 meters (273 yards) wide, which some scientists say could swing by Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029. NASA says there is a one in 45,000 chance that Apophis could pass through a "gravitational keyhole" and return to hit the planet in 2036. Finish reading the article at : Yahoo Science News |
