NASA Inspector General Lobs Big Rocks At Agency's Asteroid Hunting Program

coondoggie writes Lack of money, management structure and staff are hampering NASA's ability to effectively identify and track comets, meteorites and asteroids that might threaten Earth. The space agency's Inspector General, Paul Martin, issued a scathing report this week that said while NASA's Near Earth Object program has done substantial work in identifying the sometimes massive rocks hurtling around the planet it is substantially behind in its goal of cataloging 90% of those 140 meters in diameter by 2020, among other issues.

Comments

Re:90%

[Gr8Apes]

Compare now 10% of all 140+ meter asteroids are known and 95% of all 1 km asteroids are known. So 90% 140+ asteroids mean 100% for all 300+ meters asteroids

How on earth (pun intended) can you know that you've found 10% or 95% of anything that you don't know the full set of?

Note also that most of these efforts looks at the plane of the solar system, what about extra-planar objects? Granted, most of those are comets, but then again, comets can be big too.