Asteroid hunting missions struggle for funding
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028976
Nature : Ground-based telescopes have located about 90% of the largest asteroids that threaten Earth, but many smaller ones remain undetected. Although small asteroids won’t destroy the planet, they could cause serious problems were they to strike a major metropolitan area, such as New York City. Several missions have been proposed to launch space-based telescopes to watch out for the hundreds of thousands of smaller asteroids. However, at least one private enterprise, called Sentinel , has been struggling to raise the funding needed to meet its proposed launch date in 2019. Another, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam), won’t be ready until at least 2022. To help raise global awareness about asteroids and the need to protect our planet, the first official Asteroid Day is being planned for 30 June.
