The space subcommittee of the House Science Committee is planning a hearing for next Thursday, October 11, on “Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) – Status of the Survey Program and Review of NASA’s Report to Congress”. A variety of people both within and outside of NASA are scheduled to testify:
- Dr. James Green, Director, Planetary Science Division, NASA
- Dr. Scott Pace, Associate Administrator, Program Analysis and Evaluation, NASA
- Dr. Donald K. Yeomans, Manager, Near Earth Object Program Office, NASA
- Dr. Donald B. Campbell, Professor of Astronomy, Cornell University
- Mr. Russell L. Schweickart, Chairman, B612 Foundation
This hearing comes more than six months after NASA completed the report mentioned in the hearing’s title, which concluded that significantly more money would be needed to meet the goals mandated by Congress of detecting 90 percent of near Earth objects 140 meters or more in diameter by 2020. That report, which also discussed potential deflection strategies, was criticized sharply by people outside NASA like Schweickart; that promises an interesting exchange of views at the hearing.
Ironically, I am just now reading the paper about the probable asteroid collision that created the impactor that killed off the dinosaurs in Nature. Great line in the associated coverage, “It is a poignant thought that the Baptistina collision [that created the cloud of debris one of which hit the Earth killing the dinosaurs and another hitting the moon creating Tyco] some 160 million years ago sealed the fate of the late-Cretaceous [65 million years ago] dinosaurs well before most of them have even evolved. The most important point raised by Bottke and colleagues’ discovery of the Baptistina asteroid family is how severe the repercussions of cataclysmic collisions in the asteroid belt can be for the Earth-Moon system.â€
— Donald
BTW, please note that my Web site is finally back up!
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