A report is chilling. asteroid hitting the Earth , imploding humanity … The scene described in so many sci-fi blockbusters could it happen one day in the “real life”? The Inspector General of NASA is worried: in a report published Monday, he believes that the efforts of the agency to hunt down dangerous meteors and develop protection systems are clearly inadequate.
Late projected goals
In 2005, Congress had directed NASA to implement the “Near-Earth Objects” (NEO) Program detect asteroid 140 meters in diameter and more a potential risk to our planet. It was to catalog 90% by 2020, says the document.
While NASA has discovered, cataloged and identified over 11,000 orbits of these objects since 1998, the space agency believes have hunted for only 10% of the total estimated time and it will not be able to meet the objective of 90% by 2020, the report concluded.
Not enough “strategies defense “
The authors also found that since the beginning of the effort required by Congress in 2005, NASA” has no structured program to manage a conglomerate of research and uncoordinated scattered activities with inadequate supervision and no criteria for measuring progress. “
In the annual budget of $ 40 million awarded in 2014 at the NASA NEO program, about a million dollars only 7% of the total, was spent on defense strategies, according to the Inspector General. This ranges from emergency preparedness to the ground as the evacuation of people to attempt to destroy an asteroid with a threat or divert its path.
Although the vast majority of these celestial objects entering in this size range disintegrate in the atmosphere before reaching the ground, some may resist and cause extensive damage. The report cites the case of the meteorite 18 meters in diameter that no one had seen it coming and that exploded in February 2013 to 23,000 meters above Chelyabinsk, Russia, with an equivalent power to 30 atomic bombs, blowing windows of homes, damaging buildings and injuring more than a thousand people.
No comments:
Post a Comment