NASA asteroid defense program audited, is poorly managed

According to an audit of the US space agency’s program to detect and protect the Earth from incoming asteroids, just $1 million of the program’s $40 million annual budget is spent on strategies to deflect an incoming asteroid or evacuate areas in danger of impact. NASA was tasked by Congress in 2005 to establish a program for tracking near-Earth objects (NEO) greater than 140 meters in diameter (460 feet), to decide on their threat and to catalogue 90% of these objects by 2020. “While the program has discovered, categorized, and plotted the orbits of more than 11,000 NEOs since 1998, NASA estimates that it has identified only 10% of all asteroids 140 meters and larger and will not meet the 2020 deadline,” said the audit by NASA Inspector General Paul Martin.

Read the full story on Rappler.