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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.
The report is really full of strange assertions. Say - currently Pan STARRS works full time to search for asteroids, but you won't find this fact in a report. Neither there is a mentions, that it is exactly lack of funds that only multi million private donation provided uninterrupted work of this project few years back. Of cause, someone could be blamed for that. But there is not even mention of that such lack of money, instead it is insisted that there so huge money are spent on search for asteroids. Then, they criticize allocation of funds to Space Surveillance Telescope in Australia. That is true, that there are no mentioned agreements, the trick is that all software for the telescope is developed by just the same team, which received grants from NASA and more - asteroid tracking will not even interference with operation of telescope while performing duties, so agreements might be not an issue after all, because nothing will change in operation of telescope to enable it to look for asteroids. And what is important - this telescope will be most powerful asteroid tracking telescope. So was it a good idea to spend money on it? I would say yes. For authors it is really no. so we have a situation that someone wants to show who is boss here. But unfortunately, those pretending to be bosses look more like idiots.