NASA – Defending Earth Via New Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO).

[HuckleB]

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/nasa-defending-earth/

"...

The purpose of the office is to coordinate efforts to defend the Earth from Near Earth Objects (NEOs) – essentially comets and asteroids on a collision course with the Earth. The director is Lindley Johnson, who is currently the NEO program executive, which is an obvious fit with the new office.

NEOs do pose a threat to our civilization. You don’t have to be Bruce Willis to imagine how devastating it could be for a large rock traveling faster than a bullet to hit the Earth. Of course, the answer is that it could fall anywhere along a spectrum from nothing to wiping out our entire species. Obviously NASA is more concerned with the latter.

There are many NEOs, mostly asteroids whose orbits cross the orbit of Earth or bring it close. Objects pass close to the Earth all the time, in fact.

Perhaps more worrisome are objects that are visitors to the inner solar system. These are mostly comets, either periodic or one time comets, barrelling in from the outer solar system. These are more worrisome because they can be more difficult to predict and they are traveling, relative to the Earth, much faster than asteroids moseying across our orbit.

..."


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This makes sense. Now about the funding. Hmm.