Assessing the Risks, Impacts, and Solutions for Space Threats

Near-Earth Object (NEOs) are asteroids and comets that enter the near-Earth space. They are primitive leftover building blocks of the Solar System. Today we do not have a complete inventory of all the possible impactors. NASA was tasked by Congress in 1998 to catalog 90 percent of all the large NEOs within 10 years. The large NEOs are those that are 1 kilometer or more in size. A large NEO would cause a global catastrophe if one struck the Earth. NASA now is cataloging up to an estimated 95 percent of all the NEOs over 1 kilometer in size. That said, none of these known large NEOs pose any threat of impact to the Earth within the next 100 years. On Friday, February 15,2013, a meteor exploded over Russia with more energy than 20 atomic bombs, shattering glass and injuring over 1,000 people. That same day, an asteroid passed safely by Earth within the orbital belt of geostationary satellites. The days' newspapers read like sci-fi movie scripts, but all the content was real. The threat from these near-Earth objects, as well as threats from space weather, debris, and more, deserves a closer look. What have NASA and private space efforts done to increase awareness of these space threats? And, what is being done to protect the public and the systems we rely on from these threats?