In 2005, the Congress recommended that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) establish a program that would track near-Earth objects, or NEO, that are bigger than 460 feet in diameter as these objects could cause significant damage if they hit wrong places on Earth. The program was also tasked to assess these threats and catalogue 90 percent of NEOs by 2020.
Although the budget for the program has increased by 10-fold in a matter of five years from 4 million per year in 2009 to $40 million this year, NASA's Inspector General said that the agency will not be able to meet its goal of identifying 90 percent of the asteroids and comets that are crossing the Earth's orbit.
In the report "NASA's Efforts to Identify Near-Earth Objects and Mitigate Hazards" released on Monday, Sept. 15, NASA Inspector General Paul Martin said that the efforts of the U.S. agency are not well-coordinated, under-staffed and ill managed and that given its resources and current pace, NASA will not be able to meet the congress-ordered goal of cataloguing 90 percent of NEOs 6 years from now.
"Even though the Program has discovered, categorized, and plotted the orbits of more than 11,000 NEOs since 1998, NASA will fall short of meeting the 2005 Authorization Act goal of finding 90 percent of NEOs larger than 140 meters in diameter by 2020," the audit reads [pdf].
The report also added that the program would become more effective, efficient and transparent if it were organized and managed according to standard NASA research program requirements. It also urged NASA to formalize the program with a strategic plan.
So far, NASA has only catalogued about 10 percent of all asteroids that are at least 460 feet in diameter albeit it appears to be more adept with the largest of the asteroids as the agency has found about 95 percent of asteroids that measure about 1 km or larger in diameter, the ones considered to be the most destructive.
Although most NEO's do not cause harm because they disintegrate before they reach the Earth's surface, some manage to survive and cause significant damage. The 57-foot meteor that exploded in Russia last year, for instance, destroyed buildings and injured over 1,000 people.
In response to the audit, NASA said that it will act on the recommendations of the Inspector General as part of its commitment to the asteroid initiative.
