English Press Worries About Asteroid Due in 172 Years

Asteroid Ida - which is not heading toward Earth any time soon.

Apparently momentarily bored with covering the always entertaining (and occasionally Hitler loving) Royal Family, the British press has picked up on the possibility that the Earth will get hit by a rather large asteroid in 2182.

Giant asteroid ‘heading for Earth in 2182 and Asteroid Could Raze London are just two of the headlines blaring in English newspapers this week. Apparently, the amusingly named asteroid 1999 RQ36 has about a 1-in-1000 chance of hitting Earth, odds  that The Sun mentions in the 12th paragraph of its story.

Still, these are relatively high odds as celestial collisions are concerned. The odds are usually refined (one way or the other) as more observations are made. Parabolic Arc will, of course, keep you posted on all developments.

Meanwhile, some folks think that NASA should be taking the threat of being bombed from space a bit more seriously:

Protecting Earth from menacing space rocks that could impact our planet should be designated a top-level NASA strategic goal, according to an agency task force. To achieve that goal, NASA should establish a Planetary Defense Coordination Office to oversee the effort, the task force said.

The seven-person NASA Advisory Council’s Ad-Hoc Task Force on Planetary Defense called for the new asteroid-watching office after reviewing ideas for detecting, characterizing and deflecting threatening near-Earth objects (NEOs), as well as discussing international coordination to deal with the issue.

The task force, which met here July 8-9, is reviewing its advocacy of launching an infrared detector spacecraft placed into a Venus-like orbit to provide a long-distance lookout for NEOs, which could speed up surveillance duties by decades compared to relying solely on ground-based observations.

NASA has been working on the problem, although efforts have been lagging. In 2005, Congress tasked the space agency with detecting 90 percent of NEOs with diameters of 140 meters or greater by 2020. NASA is running behind on the task, largely due to a lack of funding spent on the task.