The New Scientist website, on the 26th of September 2008, has an article about a report given to the UN asking them to take control of defending the earth from asteroids. Its says,
The report asks the UN to assume responsibility for responding to potentially catastrophic asteroid threats. "For 4.5 billion years, we've been bashed continuously by asteroids. It's time for that to stop," former Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart told the assembly.
Currently, NASA is watching 209 NEOs, none of which is considered to be dangerous. But a threat is likely to be detected within the next 15 years, according to the ASE. "New telescopes coming online will increase these discoveries by a factor of 100," said Ed Lu, astronaut on space shuttle Atlantis.
Recent "benign catastrophes", such as the meteorites that recently struck Peru and Canada, and the Tunguska fireball that exploded 120 years ago over Siberia with a force equivalent to 2,000 Hiroshima bombs, may have helped raise public awareness. "The Tunguska fireball could have destroyed a city," warned Schweickart.
The ASE believes the price tag of the project to be around $500 million, half the cost of putting a single geosynchronous satellite into orbit.
How we have managed to survive without this up to now truly is a mystery.
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