Focus has been on higher-profile missions like a moon landing and Mars visit. Read more at straitstimes.com.
WASHINGTON - Thousands of asteroids as big as the Washington Monument zip around our solar system at 64,000 kmh, hunks of metal or rock that could strike with 10 times the force of the most powerful nuclear weapon and kill millions of people.The space agency estimates there are about 25,000 asteroids of at least 140m in diameter near Earth's orbit. While the odds of them crashing into our planet at any given time are minuscule, Congress directed Nasa to find 90 per cent of them by 2020.
On Sept 26, Nasa also plans to direct a spacecraft the size of a small car to slam into an asteroid at 24,000 kmh in a bid to shift its trajectory. That asteroid isn't a threat to Earth, but the mission is the first time Nasa has practised bumping one to change its course.Asteroid-ramming techniques won't matter if scientists can't find the potential threats, advocates say.
About 500 times a year, researchers identify asteroids of at least 140m in diameter near Earth's orbit. At that size - the width of one-and-a-half football fields - they pass a semi-apocalyptic Goldilocks test. In 2013, a roughly 20m asteroid broke apart about 25km above the town of Chelyabinsk, Russia, shattering windows and injuring more than 1,600 people. Russia also was the site of the most destructive asteroid in recorded human history.
The Surveyor telescope is projected to have a wider field of vision, allowing scientists to get a broader landscape of nearby asteroids, Mr Casey Dreier, chief advocate and senior space policy adviser at the Planetary Society, said in a phone interview. And its infrared sensors will spot dark asteroids invisible to the naked eye.
Prof Mainzer said she hasn't gotten an explanation from the administration for the proposed cuts and delay.
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