10,000 and Counting
Hey Space Placers! NASA has just announced the discovery of the 10,000th Near Earth Object (NEO). NEO's are comets and asteroids that pass within about 28 million miles of the Earth. We want to find and keep track of NEO's to insure that they do not pose a threat of collision with our planet. While finding 10,000 of these leftovers from the formation of the solar system is a milestone, the fact that there are an estimated 10 times more to be found is sobering. The world has had its' attention focused on asteroids this year due to the February explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia that coincided with the predicted flyby the same day of a NEO. We have had other high profile NEO flybys this year, notably 1998 QE2 earlier this month. With NASA's Asteroid Initiative Redirect Mission and NASA's 2014 budget seeking to double the NEO hunt funding from $20 million to $40 million, perhaps the NEO finds will increase. This is pretty cheap planetary defense when you conside...