NASA Can Not Pay for Killer Asteroid Hunt
Tuesday March 6, 2007
According to MSNBC, officials at NASA say that while they have the capability to find nearly all of the asteroids which might threaten our planet, they do not have enough money for such a project, so the job just will not get done.
In 2005, Congress asked the space agency to develop a plan to detect and track most of the deadly asteroids and come up with a method to deflect those that could cause catastropic damage. NASA determined that it would cost about $1 billion dollars to find at least 90% of the20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets by 2020.
"We know what to do, we just don't have the money," said Simon "Pete" Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center.
A report, developed by NASA, was previewed this week at a Planetary Defense Conference in Washington this week and will be released by NASA next week.