An order from the United States Congress tells NASA should find 90% of the potentially hazardous asteroids near and exceeding 140 meters in diameter. However, the Inspector General of the space agency, Paul Martin, acknowledged Monday that they feel unable to meet the target.
"NASA has identified estimated that only 10% of all asteroids 140 meters or more," Martin said. "Given the pace and current resources," the agency "will not meet the goal of identifying 90% of these objects in 2020."
The report by Martin claims that NASA's efforts are poorly coordinated, poorly managed and understaffed, as a one-person office directs "somewhat structured that are not well integrated and that also lack the research cluster needed to monitor progress "supervision.
NASA's efforts to find asteroids are poorly coordinated, poorly managed and understaffed, according to the Inspector General.
The shortfall comes despite an increase of 10 times the annual NASA budget over the past five years -HA last from three to thirty million since 2009-for monitoring and evaluations of potentially hazardous asteroids and comets passing about 45 million kilometers from the planet called "near-Earth objects" (NEOs, for its acronym in English). Since 1998, the agency has spent about 77 million euros in programs to find, evaluate and mitigate the effects of potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids.
NASA has been able to locate 95% of large and potentially destructive asteroids, exceeding the kilometer in diameter. However, although from July 2014 the agency has discovered about 11,230 NEOs -862 of them in the large ones, that figure is only about 10% of the hazardous asteroids smaller size-about 140 meters wide - implying that are well below the target of Congress.
The report contains five recommendations to strengthen efforts to detect asteroids NASA, including hiring at least four to six employees to help run the program and project coordination with other American and international agencies or private finance initiatives .
The Associate Administrator for NASA's Science, John Grunsfeld, said in a letter to Martin awaits a new NEO program for September 1, 2015.
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