NASA and Close Encounters of the Worst Kind

The major concern, of course, is whether any of them are on a collision course with Earth. Our geologic record clearly indicates that not only have we been hit before, but in one instance, the object was large enough to significantly change the planet’s environment, triggering the demise of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. If they couldn’t survive an impact, what chance would we mere humans have to survive?

The major reason why we have a chance to survive a 'Big One’ -- dinosaurs had walnut-sized brains; we humans have much bigger, more highly developed brains. We could effectively defend ourselves against a threatening interloper if we develop two complimentary systems: one to detect earthbound asteroids and the other to deflect or re-direct that threat so we don’t have a ‘close encounter’ of the worst kind.

In development of the first system, there are eight near-earth object search programs in operation around the world trying to get a bead on potential impactors. Our NASA program has done a very good job detecting 90% of those that would significantly damage our planet.

The real problem though is in early detection of objects 100 to 300 meters in size. These smaller ones are much more numerous and more difficult to detect because of their size. We might be tempted to think that an impact by a smaller object would be less worrisome – true, if the impact were to occur in an uninhabited region. But the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk last month was about 20 meters in size, didn’t impact the ground and still caused 1200 injuries and millions of dollars in damages. Imagine what would’ve happened if it had reached the surface.

That’s the danger – smaller asteroids could easily destroy a city and cause tremendous loss of life. NASA’s capability to detect the smaller ones is improving but not fast enough.

John Holdren, Chairman of the U.S. House Space, Science and Technology Committee says we need an infra-red sensing telescope in a Venus-like orbit at a cost of more than $500 million.

With recent budget cuts to its science programs and internal re-allocations of funding from science missions to support manned exploration programs, NASA hasn’t been able to reach asteroid detection goals as directed by Congress in 2005 and the sequestration of funds will only further erode the meager funding already allocated to NASA for this. At current funding levels NASA could identify all potentially earth-threatening asteroids in 20 years.

For the deflection system, scientists and engineers have thought out the basics of asteroid deflection but to date, there is no NASA-agency level work being done to actually develop a space missile defense system for astronomical threats. In fact, NASA administrator Charles Bolden says if an asteroid was discovered just three weeks from an Earth hit, NASA couldn’t do anything about it ‘because for decades we have put it off’.

In other words, we’ve known about this threat for decades, have understood the risks, but have deferred action to protect against a collision by not setting this as a high-enough priority.  Perhaps it’s the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ syndrome. Maybe in light of all the other budgetary challenges facing Congress, funding to NASA to address this item falls far down the list of imperatives.

If we think back to what happened here on Earth 65 million years ago, and imagine what it came to mean for the dinosaurs of that era, we might decide that Congress should assign this threat a much higher priority. If Congress were to properly fund this research, just as we’ve been able to build an early-detection and warning system for potentially damaging storms, we could put into place a asteroid collision warning system that would allow us to curtail loss of life and property, at a minimum, and possibly save the planet (not ‘if’ but) when ‘the Big One’ comes along.

Do you think asteroid collision avoidance should be a higher priority? Call your Congressperson and ask what they’re doing to protect us from becoming the next big cosmic extinction.

Derrick H. Pitts, Sc. D. is Chief Astronomer at the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia