Teh One Who Knocks
03-21-2013, 11:07 AM
By Joseph Straw / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
http://i.imgur.com/HJl2TrQ.jpg
New Yorkers received sobering advice Tuesday on what to do if an asteroid was detected hurtling toward Times Square.
Pray.
That plan came not from a priest, but the head of NASA at a Capitol Hill hearing that could have been a scene in a Hollywood disaster flick.
The House Science Committee summoned NASA boss Charles Bolden, the White House Science advisor and the head of the U.S. Space Command to testify whether anything could be done to stop an asteroid from sending mankind the way of the dinosaurs.
"What would we do if you detected even a small one like the one that detonated in Russia headed for New York in three weeks? What would you do?" Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) asked.
The witnesses turned to look at each other.
“Bend over and what?" Posey pressed, drawing chuckles from the hearing room.
"The answer to you is, if it's coming in three weeks, pray," Bolden said.
He said Americans might want the government to be able to zap asteroids —but the government has not provided the money to do so.
"We are where we are today because you all told us to do something — and between the Administration and the Congress ... the funding did not come," he said.
The good news is that the biggest, kilometer-plus objects — like the one suspected of killing off the dinosaurs — typically only hit once every 20,000 years.
And they are so large, they are the easiest to spot well in advance of a possible impact.
NASA has identified and is tracking 9,600 so-called “near earth objects,” Bolden said. He said the agency believes it has identified 93% of those larger than a kilometer, and 60% percent of those larger than 300 meters in diameter.
None is known to be careening toward earth, Bolden emphasized.
The hearing, titled “Threats from Space: A Review of U.S. Government Efforts to Track and Mitigate Asteroids and Meteors,” was called after a meteor exploded in the sky over central Russia a month ago.
The object was only 17 meters across and approached Earth out of astronomers’ view because it was backlit by the sun, witnesses said.
White House science advisor John Holdren recommended funding a monitoring satellite that would scan space while orbiting the sun near Venus. Bolden advocated President Obama's plan to land astronauts on an actual asteroid by 2025.
A manned asteroid mission would create all the capabilities needed to push a doomsday rock from an Earth-bound trajectory, Bolden said.
An unmanned NASA probe landed on the asteroid Eros in 2001.
Obama's 2013 budget request sought roughly $20 million for asteroid protection compared to current funding of $4 million a year.
Holdren said that adequate asteroid protection would cost $100 million a year, up to the $2 billion through 2025 sought for the manned asteroid shot.
Despite Hollywood's preference for nuking asteroids, scientists say the best approaches would be to push the asteroid off course, such as with a rocket booster, or to pull it off course using the gravity of a spacecraft passing it through space.
http://i.imgur.com/HJl2TrQ.jpg
New Yorkers received sobering advice Tuesday on what to do if an asteroid was detected hurtling toward Times Square.
Pray.
That plan came not from a priest, but the head of NASA at a Capitol Hill hearing that could have been a scene in a Hollywood disaster flick.
The House Science Committee summoned NASA boss Charles Bolden, the White House Science advisor and the head of the U.S. Space Command to testify whether anything could be done to stop an asteroid from sending mankind the way of the dinosaurs.
"What would we do if you detected even a small one like the one that detonated in Russia headed for New York in three weeks? What would you do?" Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) asked.
The witnesses turned to look at each other.
“Bend over and what?" Posey pressed, drawing chuckles from the hearing room.
"The answer to you is, if it's coming in three weeks, pray," Bolden said.
He said Americans might want the government to be able to zap asteroids —but the government has not provided the money to do so.
"We are where we are today because you all told us to do something — and between the Administration and the Congress ... the funding did not come," he said.
The good news is that the biggest, kilometer-plus objects — like the one suspected of killing off the dinosaurs — typically only hit once every 20,000 years.
And they are so large, they are the easiest to spot well in advance of a possible impact.
NASA has identified and is tracking 9,600 so-called “near earth objects,” Bolden said. He said the agency believes it has identified 93% of those larger than a kilometer, and 60% percent of those larger than 300 meters in diameter.
None is known to be careening toward earth, Bolden emphasized.
The hearing, titled “Threats from Space: A Review of U.S. Government Efforts to Track and Mitigate Asteroids and Meteors,” was called after a meteor exploded in the sky over central Russia a month ago.
The object was only 17 meters across and approached Earth out of astronomers’ view because it was backlit by the sun, witnesses said.
White House science advisor John Holdren recommended funding a monitoring satellite that would scan space while orbiting the sun near Venus. Bolden advocated President Obama's plan to land astronauts on an actual asteroid by 2025.
A manned asteroid mission would create all the capabilities needed to push a doomsday rock from an Earth-bound trajectory, Bolden said.
An unmanned NASA probe landed on the asteroid Eros in 2001.
Obama's 2013 budget request sought roughly $20 million for asteroid protection compared to current funding of $4 million a year.
Holdren said that adequate asteroid protection would cost $100 million a year, up to the $2 billion through 2025 sought for the manned asteroid shot.
Despite Hollywood's preference for nuking asteroids, scientists say the best approaches would be to push the asteroid off course, such as with a rocket booster, or to pull it off course using the gravity of a spacecraft passing it through space.