Private Efforts Fill Gaps In Earth's Asteroid Defenses

Hugh Pickens sends us to Seed Magazine for an update on Earth's defenses against collisions with near-earth objects (NEOs). The bottom line is that government is moving slowly on cataloging NEOs but private bodies are picking up some of the slack. "In 2005, the US Congress directed NASA to catalog 90 percent of potentially hazardous NEOs greater than 140 meters in diameter by the year 2020 but NASA has yet to allot funds to the project. Increasingly, coordinated private efforts are working to fill the gap in Earth's NEO defenses. Earlier this year, Bill Gates and Charles Simonyi donated a combined $30 million to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), keeping it on track for first light in 2014. LSST will survey the entire visible sky deeply in multiple colors every week with its three-billion pixel digital camera, probing the mysteries of Dark Matter and Dark Energy and by opening a movie-like window on objects that change or move, the LSST will also detect and catalog NEOs."

Comments

Slightly offtopic (But about a NEO)

[B5_geek]

When I was about 12 years old {1985 (+/- 2 years)} I was 'camping' in our back-yard with a friend. As this was during summer vacation were stayed up very late terrorizing the neighborhood pretending we were ninjas or army or whatever.

It was full night, the moon was out and it was cloudless. My friend saw it first and pointed it to me. There was a large asteroid or meteor in the sky and it was bright orange in colour (as if an orange-coloured spotlight was trained on it) I have since learnt that this item was in the Earths shadow (causing the orange colour). I could see lots of impact craters on it.

It was the size of a grapefruit or softball held out at arms length. We watched it travel through the sky and the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life happened.

It bounced off the atmosphere TWICE and then fell below the horizon. There were no flame-trails that we associate with atmosphere entry.

I lived in Chatham, Ontario (about 100km due-East of Detroit, MI) and the object originated in the South-East sky and traveled westerly. It was only visible for a short time (perhaps 10 seconds), but I still remember very clearly to this day.

I have often hoped that some expert would confirm or believe me, but I have been told that I "imagined it" and "that's impossible" buy the few I have told.

Can anybody in the /. universe believe me?