An article Thursday in the Times Ledger family of neighborhood newspapers that serve the New York City borough of Queens reports that Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) has introduced legislation to provide additional funding for near Earth asteroid searches:
A Queens congressman made a move in the House of Representatives last Thursday to stop Armageddon.
U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Kew Gardens) introduced the Space act, which would channel $4 million into NASA coffers next year to underwrite the cost of sharing four Department of Defense telescopes to help track and catalog dangerous, near-Earth asteroids.
Curiously, a check of Thomas failed to turn up any mention of the bill. The article states that although Weiner introduced the bill last Thursday it “had not been referred to the committee” as of press time. However, according to this list Weiner introduced another bill the same day as well as one four days later; both have been referred to committees. Another question is why Weiner simply doesn’t cosponsor HR 3813, the “George R. Brown Near-Earth Object Survey Act” introduced in February by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). That bill—which as yet has no cosponsors—would provide five times the funding for asteroid searches as Weiner’s bill provides.
