It seems that NASA is starting to seriously look for dangerous asteroids

On Monday, NASA's chief scientist is committed to funding a space telescope to detect the vast majority of near-Earth asteroids that could threaten the Earth.

At an advisory committee meeting at NASA's headquarters in Washington, DC, Thomas Zurbuchen, deputy administrator of the agency for science, said the agency was going from the front with the The NEO surveillance mission, which would be ready to be launched at the earliest in 2025, at a cost of less than $ 600 million.

"It's a priority for us," said Zurbuchen. He has negotiated with the White House and Congress to secure funding for the mission, which will be funded by the agency's global defense budget. NASA currently spends about $ 150 million a year tracking and characterizing dangerous objects, but this amount will need to increase in the coming years. The launch date of the new monitoring mission will depend on the funds allocated to the project.

In the past, Congress has largely supported the search for dangerous asteroids. In 2005, the Congress passed a law obliging NASA to research, track and characterize the physical characteristics of asteroids and comets close to Earth with a diameter of 140 meters or more. But the White House and Congress failed to agree on specific funding for the program and efforts have faded. In surveys, asteroid detection is consistently high on the public agenda.

On the same page

Now, under the impulse of Zurbuchen, the White House and Congress seem to be moving closer to a decision. "NASA's commitment to an asteroid-space investigation is a huge step forward for those who care about human destiny," expert Ars Richard Binzel told IRIN. asteroids of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We will finally rely on knowledge, rather than luck, for our hazardous asteroid management plan."

As part of NASA's plan, the agency has accelerated the development of the double-asteroid-redirection test mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2021. This mission will use a kinetic impactor to attempt to deviate. the smallest component of the binary asteroid, Didymos, which has a diameter of 160 meters. After launching this redirect mission, NASA will then turn to funding the new surveillance mission.

Scientists generally agree that asteroids of a diameter of 140 meters or more are big enough to cause unprecedented regional devastation in the history of humanity. The new mission will detect 65% of the undiscovered asteroids 140 meters or more close to Earth in the next five years, said Zurbuchen. It will recover 90% of it within 10 years.

Zurbuchen said the NEO monitoring mission would use the technology previously studied for the NEOCam mission, which never went beyond the design phase. The new mission will be led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"It's a big step forward," said Lori Glaze, director of planetary science, at Monday's meeting. "This is something we want to do for a while.We are finally in a position where we are ready to move forward. "