NASA will not meet goal of finding 90% of near-Earth asteroids
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028264
Guardian : One of the goals Congress assigned NASA is to identify by 2020 at least 90% of the asteroids larger than 140 m in diameter that pass within 45 million km of Earth’s orbit. A report by NASA’s inspector general says that the agency will not meet that goal despite a 10-fold increase in funding over the last five years. So far, the report states, the agency has found just 10% of the asteroids believed to meet the given criteria. According to the report, the likely failure is due to understaffing and poor organization of detection efforts. The one major upside of the report is that 95% of the asteroids larger than 1 km have been found. Asteroids of that size could cause significant global destruction.
