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After four days of presentations, deliberations and decisions, the IMPACT
workshop in Turin ended last Friday on a very positive note. Despite a
number of minor disagreements, there is a general perception that
international research on the impact hazard and NEO searches are gearing up
and moving in the same direction. With additional search programmes planned
in a number of countries in the next couple of years, the sky coverage is
soon approaching saturation. Obviously, achieving such a comprehensive
coverage would be a major breakthrough. Yet it remains questionable whether
it would actually guarantee the Spaceguard Survey's goal of detecting 90%
of all NEOs >1km within the next 10 years. Other problems will also have to
be addressed: the search for fainter objects (< 1 km) requires access to
sufficiently large telescopes; how will we deal in the event of an
undetected (or, indeed, detected/predicted) Tunguska-type impact? Follow-up
searches will remain important for any calculation of potential impact
hazards.

In a politically important statement, directed at national governments and
funding agencies, the participants of the IMPACT workshop strongly
recommend that governments should establish national Spaceguard centres and
to support these centres financially in order to facilitate international
collaboration in the global Spaceguard programme.

One of the more practical results of the IMPACT workshop was the general
agreement on a much improved hazard scale in conjunction with the question
of how to deal with future predictions of possible impacts by a sizeable
near-Earth object. While the exact details will be finalized by the IAU in
the next four weeks or so, there is now a generally accepted tool on which
future cases such as XF11 and AN10 can be handled in a better way. The
final results and recommendations of the workshop will be published in
July/August.

And finally - can I just say that it was a pleasure to meet almost 20% of
CCNet subscribers at Turin - most of whom I had never met before. Putting a
face to a name and meeting individuals on a one-to-one basis has certainly
helped to improve the communication and discussion among many participants.
I am particularly glad that some of the mistakes and misunderstandings
regarding the recent AN10 debate were sorted out in an amicable manner.

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A "HOT DEBRIEF" ON THE WORKSHOP ON "INTERNATIONAL MONITORING PROGRAMS FOR
ASTEROID AND COMET THREAT" (IMPACT), HELD IN TORINO, ON JUNE 1-4, 1999.