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In Search Of the Vulcans
jonerik writes: "No, not those Vulcans. The BBC has this article on the Southwest Research Institute's (SwRI) search for the Vulcanoids, a belt of perhaps a few hundred small asteroids (perhaps between one and 25 kilometers in diameter) theorized to exist inside of Mercury's orbit around the sun. Because of their closeness to the sun and small size, the asteroids - if they exist - would be hard to observe from the ground. To that end, a NASA F/A-18 is being used to conduct a search 'of the twilight sky near the Sun that is far darker and clearer than can be obtained from the ground,' says Dr. Dan Durda of SwRI. According to the article, 'The camera used in the latest search...is trained on the region of space close to the Sun after the star has dipped below the Earth's horizon. The camera grabs twilight images at a rate of 60 frames a second.' The researchers hope to have a better idea of whether or not the Vulcanoids exist in another month or two."
Why do this now ?
Because they are there.
* Maybe they'll be stable enough to mount a nice in close power station without having to worry about Mercury's gravity well
* Maybe observing their orbits could point to some more information on the GU theory
* Maybe they could lead to some more theory on planetary formation with formation of planets close to stellar bodies
* Maybe the knowledge gained from this can lead to new designs on high-altitude fast turnaround observation of objects coming at us from the sun (Like, the last two near-miss asteroids)
* Maybe they are completly unremarkable chunks of stone, worth two or three papers and then forgotten about.
It's a ground based observation at objects too close to the sun for most observations, done on the cheap with minimal new hardware designs. I'd be very suprised if the total budget for this was much over 3 or 4 million total
The things you want NASA to do ? Guess what - they are already doing them. It's just they like doing a wide variety of different things, because you never know when you'll find something interesting in an unexplored area of science.