Beware the City-Busters from On High

Don Yeomans from the Near Earth Object Program Office in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been in the news discussing the risk of asteroid strikes here on Earth.  Back on June 9th he was the featured scientist in Time magazine's "The Man Who Guards The Planet," and more recently he has interviewed on 60 Minutes by Anderson Cooper in an episode titled Cosmic Roulette.  The story accompanying the 60 Minutes piece notes:

Though scientists are keeping an eye on most of the large asteroids and comets capable of causing global destruction by colliding with Earth, they have been able to track only one percent of the smaller ones that are capable of destroying an entire city, Anderson Cooper reports this Sunday on 60 Minutes. Cooper's story also reveals that NASA scientists first learned about the asteroid that exploded in Russia in February from Twitter and YouTube. There was no advance warning.

The issue is getting attention, but it is getting funding?  Barely, at about $40 million in 2013.  We are not too good about self-preservation unless the danger is clear and present, which is unlikely on the cosmic scale we need to deal with here.  And few nations have the luxury of peering into the heavens while man is so capable of creating a hell here on Earth, the latest being Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq.  With the U.S. carrying about 98 percent of the burden, it would be nice to have a few more nations on board. 

You can visit the NEO website if you want to learn more about the asteroid detection process and even learn about the next near approaches by the monitored asteroids.  As you can see from the table below, two were scheduled to make near passes today (2014 HN178 and 2007 FY20). 

I'm glad someone is tracking these items, though I am not so sure we will have the necessary 20-30 years warning to properly prepare. 

Crater Image and Table Credit:  http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/images/meteorcrater.html

Don Yeomans Image Credit:  Time magazine