NASA lacks money to track meteors

The US Aerospace Agency (NASA) knows that many meteors can endanger the earth, but do not have the money to complete tracking them.

Four years ago the US Congress assigned NASA the task of detecting and tracking dangerous "sky stones" that could hit the globe. However, MPs do not grant funding to NASA to build telescopes strong enough to carry out surveillance work. This is the content of a report published by the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the report, the legislature wants NASA to determine the location and orbit of 90% of dangerous meteorites between 2005 and 2020. With the available telescope system, NASA only detects about 30% of such meteorites, ie 30% of the target. The agency estimates that about 20,000 meteorites and comets in the solar system are potentially dangerous to the earth. They have a diameter greater than 140 m. But so far, NASA scientists have only discovered 6,000 meteorites among them.

Meteorites with a diameter of 140-1,000 km can completely destroy a large area of ​​the earth.(Photos: Digpoints.com)

Lindley Johnson, program director of NASA's Near-Earth Objects, insists that the " sky rocks " in the diameter of 140-1,000 km can completely destroy a large area of ​​the earth.

Last month astronomers were stunned when an object rushed into Jupiter, creating a hole about the size of the earth in the atmosphere. The hole continues to expand, while the size and origin of the object has not yet been determined. Jupiter is more frequently bombarded by meteors than the Earth because it has great gravity and size.

Although Washington's critique of " forgetting " grants NASA money, the report also acknowledges that the US government is the only government in the world that wants to stop dangerous meteorites.

According to NASA's calculations, in order to detect 90% of the 20,000 dangerous meteorites, they need $ 800 million between now and 2020 . That money will be used to build telescopes on the ground or in the universe. If NASA only had $ 300 million under parliamentary plans, scientists would not be able to detect meteorites with a diameter less than 300 meters.

But so far NASA has not received any money. John Logsdon, a professor of space policy at George Washington University, said that NASA could never be funded.

" Many taxpayers think that the program to detect dangerous meteorites is a silly and vain plan. So far only NASA has detected 5 objects flying near the earth, but the possibility of them colliding with the Earth only about 1 / 1,000,000 ", he said.

NASA is closely monitoring a meteorite with a diameter of 131 km. It has the ability to collide with Earth in 2048 with a probability of 1 / 3,000. Another meteor with a diameter of about 260 km is capable of bombarding green planets in 2036, 2037 and 2069 with a probability of 1 / 43,000.