[meteorite-list] Asteroid Experts Say We're Not Ready

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:08:21 2004
Message-ID: <200209041627.JAA14258_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.msnbc.com/news/787078.asp

Asteroid experts say we're not ready
Workshop highlights need for plan to counter potential threat
Reuters
September 3, 2002
  
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 - A doomsday asteroid could wipe out
humanity if it collided with Earth, but scientists said on Tuesday
there was little support for investigating how to turn aside a big
deadly space rock.
       The United States spends $3.5 million to $4 million a year to track
asteroids and comets that might hit Earth at some point, but very little
on strategies to get our planet out of the way, said astronomer Don
Yeomans of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
       "There's been very little money spent on mitigation studies,"
Yeomans said at a scientific workshop on what it would take to get out
of the way of an incoming near-Earth object, or NEO, as these potential
cosmic hazards are known.
       Part of the problem is the lack of an actual hazard: Yeomans and
others at the workshop agreed that there is no present danger of an
asteroid strike big enough to cause cataclysmic damage to Earth.
       But if one were detected in the future, there is no plan in place to
deal with the threat, Yeomans and others said.
       "What if you do find one with our name on it? Then whose
responsibility is it?" Yeomans said. "You assume it would be the
military's, but which one? ... NASA's charter is to find them and track
them. That's it."
       
BACK TO THE DARK AGES

       Since 1998, NASA has been identifying NEOs as part of a
decade-long search for the biggest ones, those with diameters of 0.6
miles (1 kilometer) or more.
       An asteroid this size could eradicate humans as a species, or send
them back to the dark ages, said Clark Chapman of the Southwest
Research Institute. For this reason, these big NEOs should be the top
priority for mitigation, he said.
       But smaller rocks, about 1,000 feet (300 meters) across, could
destroy cities, spur monstrous tsunamis and flatten an area the size of
New Jersey, according to Erik Asphaug of the University of California at
Santa Cruz.
       While the bigger asteroids would disrupt society most profoundly
and have the longest-lasting effect, the probability of them ever striking
Earth is extremely low, Asphaug said in an interview.
       However, he said, "from the point of economic harm and lives lost
today, it's probably the 300-meter asteroid that is the worst," because
the likelihood of one of these hitting Earth is 10 times higher than a
0.6-mile (1-kilometer) NEO.

$10 BILLION AND 10 YEARS
 
       Compared with a natural disaster such as a massive earthquake or
volcanic eruption, where national agencies are prepared to mobilize and
communicate with those in harm's way, Asphaug said there is little or
no preparation for what to do in the event a NEO is headed for Earth.
       But he reckoned a mitigation program to nudge the incoming threat
off-course could be put in place in 10 years at a cost of perhaps $10
billion, which might be made available if a credible NEO threat were
detected.
       "Once you identify the thing, I'm sure that money will be no
problem," Asphaug said.
       As of last week, NASA's NEO tracking program had identified
2,027 asteroids and comets that might come to Earth's neighborhood.
       Of the 36 ranked of highest risk, only one merited scientific
attention, and even so, its chance of a collision with Earth was deemed
as low as the chance that some random object would hit our planet in
the next few decades.
Received on Wed 04 Sep 2002 12:27:34 PM PDT