SIGHTINGS


 
NASA And USAF Now
Talking Asteriod Protection
Discovery News Brief
http://www.discovery.com
4-29-98

Asteroid trackers say the U.S. government may be getting serious about the threat of an asteroid or comet colliding with Earth.
 
Scientists attending Space '98 and Robotics '98 conferences in Albuquerque, N.M., this week report serious discussions between NASA and the Air Force to collaborate on identifying any nearby flying rock that might be on a collision course with Earth, the Albuquerque Tribune reports.
 
But they'll believe it, they say, when they see the funds and expanded programs needed to effectively search the universe for potentially devastating "near-Earth objects."
 
Nearly 400 space scientists and engineers are attending the conferences, and they say they have already found dozens of potentially hazardous objects, or "PHO's," whose orbits may someday bring them too close to Earth for comfort.
 
The threat is real, even if it may seem improbable and distant, says Mark Boslough, a scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque.
 
Boslough accurately predicted that a series of comet impacts on Jupiter four years ago would have the explosive force of more than all of the world's nuclear bombs. The impacts were so extreme they sent Jovian debris streaming into space and caused lasting atmospheric changes on the giant planet's face, the Tribune reports.
 
But without more government money, it will take decades to find all the asteroids that could pose an Earthly threat, says Eleanor Helin, who directs the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking program at the National Air and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
 
Her program alone has identified 118 threatening asteroids among 12,025 new ones it has identified in the last few years. She says the program needs to be tripled.
 
New Mexico astronomer Alan Hale, who co-discovered one of the most spectacular comets ever seen, Comet Hale-Bopp, suggested government officials may sense that the issue may be "capturing the public's fancy."
 
Boslough says scientists have plenty of evidence that potentially catastrophic collisions occur about once a century, but the ultimate damage depends on where on Earth the object strikes and how big it is, the Tribune says.
 
Scientists believe the evidence is compelling that a comet struck Earth 65 million years ago and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
 



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