NASA Inspector General Lobs Big Rocks At Agency's Asteroid Hunting Program 35
coondoggie writes Lack of money, management structure and staff are hampering NASA's ability to effectively identify and track comets, meteorites and asteroids that might threaten Earth. The space agency's Inspector General, Paul Martin, issued a scathing report this week that said while NASA's Near Earth Object program has done substantial work in identifying the sometimes massive rocks hurtling around the planet it is substantially behind in its goal of cataloging 90% of those 140 meters in diameter by 2020, among other issues.
Those who wrote report hardly even understand subj (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Those who wrote report hardly even understand s (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Those who wrote report hardly even understand s (Score:5, Interesting)
currently Pan STARRS works full time to search for asteroids, but you won't find this fact in a report.
But that's not the assertion the report makes. The report does not say that there are no programs and people working on the problem. The report is saying that the current efforts and projected efforts will not be enough to meet the 90% goal by 2020 given that only 10% of the estimated target asteroids have been found.
But there is not even mention of that such lack of money, instead it is insisted that there so huge money are spent on search for asteroids.
Funding is one aspect; however, the report also asserts that even if the budget were increased significantly the current program's structure will probably not be efficient enough to take advantage of increases and recommends a change in management structure.
Then, they criticize allocation of funds to Space Surveillance Telescope in Australia. That is true, that there are no mentioned agreements, the trick is that all software for the telescope is developed by just the same team, which received grants from NASA and more - asteroid tracking will not even interference with operation of telescope while performing duties, so agreements might be not an issue after all, because nothing will change in operation of telescope to enable it to look for asteroids.
The problem is not who is developing the software or how effective it is. The problem is the SST will be in Australia's hands and no agreement is in place for time on the telescope. While the future administrators might be friendly to the NEO program, there are no guaranteed time allocation (in writing). The criticism is that NASA should not have granted the money without some sort of formal agreement or plan for after the transfer. Just like any contract: get it in writing.
And what is important - this telescope will be most powerful asteroid tracking telescope.
Which makes it even more important that NASA get some sort of agreement about how much time the NEO program will get. It's not like powerful telescopes are easily obtained at your local grocery store.
So was it a good idea to spend money on it? I would say yes. For authors it is really no.
That's not what the authors are saying. They are not saying the money should not have been spent. They are saying that NASA made a terrible deal because they essentially gave money away with little assurances that they get anything in return. It's not like NASA is just swimming in excess money. NASA's budget is always under pressure to do more with less.
so we have a situation that someone wants to show who is boss here. But unfortunately, those pretending to be bosses look more like idiots.
No we have an inspector general doing their job: oversight.
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The report is saying that the current efforts and projected efforts will not be enough to meet the 90% goal by 2020 given that only 10% of the estimated target asteroids have been found.
this is pretty much known to everybody. Exactly only telescopes in space or LSST could perform task and they are scheduled to be launched in 20s - so after 2020
given that only 10% of the estimated target asteroids have been found.
the thing is that more than 70% of 300m asteroids are found, about 90% of 500m are found and 95%
90% (Score:2)
Clearing 90% of an extremely rare but potentially apocalyptic event.
"We're happy to report that, with this program, of all the meteorites that would destroy Earth in the next century, only one in ten will end humanity."
Re:90% (Score:4, Interesting)
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Compare now 10% of all 140+ meter asteroids are known and 95% of all 1 km asteroids are known. So 90% 140+ asteroids mean 100% for all 300+ meters asteroids
How on earth (pun intended) can you know that you've found 10% or 95% of anything that you don't know the full set of?
Note also that most of these efforts looks at the plane of the solar system, what about extra-planar objects? Granted, most of those are comets, but then again, comets can be big too.
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how? easy.
Build model and verify it with available data. There could be some errors, but not much. If model holds for 10 years of new asteroids found - it is good enough.
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Figure out how you're scanning for things, and the probabilities of finding things if they're there. Then keep track of what you find, and watch the numbers of new things you find. From that, you should come up with an estimate as to how many things are findable by whatever technique you're using. For example, if you were checking fish in a lake by scooping up quantities at random, marking them somehow, and counting the unmarked ones, over time you'd get fewer and fewer unmarked, and you could use that
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Otherwise, how would they know when they get to cataloging 90 percent of them You can't catalog 90 percent of a group unless you know what 100 percent of that group is. Because then............... oh hell, you get my point.
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But former president Bush might ask "What if they misunderestimated?"
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You might be unaware of this thing called "statistical sampling"
I'm quite aware of it. I was making admittedly lame humor.
re (Score:1)
NASA behind schedule??? (Score:2)
Yeah, right. Next you'll be telling me that we're not going to be putting a man on Mars in 2035.
Let them come! (Score:1)
One asteroid strikes onto any major US city and they'll restart everything and allocate all the money!
Tracking meteorites makes no sense... (Score:3, Informative)
since they have already impacted the Earth and done their damage. You want to track meteoroids which are still in space and may be susceptible to intervention.
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Pay Dirt (Score:1)
And the same is true for alien weapon research (Score:2)
"Lack of money, management structure and staff are hampering NASA's ability to effectively identify and track comets, meteorites and asteroids that might threaten Earth"
Oh god, who cares? If it's going to hit it's going to hit, end of story. It hasn't happened since we knew what asteroids were, and it didn't happen for the millions of years where we didn't, so it appears knowing one way or the other has no bearing on the outcome.
What a waste of time and effort. Trust me, if there's a big one and it's going
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Yes, and then there is the question of why I might care about that. Well, except to note that LEO was also no that valuable.
Paraphrasing myself the other day (Score:2)
Try to bring funders' attention to the destructive element of Near-Erth Objects.
Maybe even the A-challenged NSA and their apologists then might become interested in slushing some of the NSA's allotment
to the amount of 52 billion (52,000,000,000) dollars towards this NASA program.