Asteroid Defense: NASA to Formulate Planetary Protection Plan

NASA has begun a fact-finding appraisal of how best to detect, track, catalogue and characterize near-Earth asteroids and comets—and what can be done to deflect an object found on course to strike our planet.

The need to prepare is highlighted this week as astronomers watch a large asteroid that will pass close to Earth on July 3.

Selected experts from a variety of fields are here this week at a NASA workshop on Near-Earth Object (NEO) Detection, Characterization and Threat Mitigation. The meeting is a unique, “idea gathering” event being carried out under direction of the U.S. Congress. The intent is to provide lawmakers with an “executable program”—but also one that will clearly need funds to implement that program in an orderly and timely fashion.

NASA is on a fast-track to provide by year’s end an initial report to Congress that includes an analysis of possible alternatives that might be employed to divert an object on a likely collision course with Earth.