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A new program office to coordinate NASA-sponsored
efforts to detect, track and characterize potentially hazardous
asteroids and comets that could approach Earth will be established
at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena,
CA.
NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office
will focus on the goal of locating at least 90 percent of
the estimated 2,000 asteroids and comets that approach the
Earth and are larger than about 2/3-mile (about 1 kilometer)
in diameter, by the end of the next decade.
“These are objects that are difficult to
detect because of their relatively small size, but are large
enough to cause global effects if one hit the Earth,”
said Dr. Donald K. Yeomans of JPL, who will head the new program
office. “Finding a majority of this population will require
the efforts of researchers at several NASA centers, at universities
and at observatories across the country, and will require
the participation by the international astronomy community
as well.”
“We determined that, in order to achieve
our goals, we need a more formal focusing of our near-Earth
object tracking efforts and related communications with the
supporting research community,” said Dr. B. Carl Pilcher,
science director for Solar System Exploration in NASA’s
Office of Space Science, NASA Headquarters. “I want to
emphasize that science research solicitations and resulting
peer reviews, international coordination, and strategic planning
regarding future missions will remain the responsibilities
of NASA Headquarters.”
In addition to managing the detection and cataloging
of near-Earth objects, the new NASA office will be responsible
for facilitating communications between the astronomical community
and the public should any potentially hazardous objects be
discovered as a result of the program, Pilcher said.
JPL was selected to host the program office
because of its expertise in precisely tracking the positions
and predicted paths of asteroids and comets. No significant
additional staff hiring at JPL is expected at this time.
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