Viewing Rock Stars

NASA says that today's double asteroid pass into near Earth space -- asteroids picked up by the Near Earth Program on Sunday -- shows how critical the program is.

Near-Earth asteroid 2010 RX30, which is estimated to be 32 to 65 feet in size, will pass within 154,000 miles of Earth at 5:51 a.m. ET Wednesday. The second object, 2010 RF12, estimated to be 20 to 46 feet in size, will pass within 49,088 miles of Earth at 5:12 pm ET.

In case you were wondering, that means the two asteroids will pass within 0.6 and 0.2 lunar distances from the Earth, respectively. The first will be closest to Earth over the north Pacific, and the second, over Antarctica.

Roughly 50 million objects pass through near-Earth space each day, Yeomans said. But what makes this situation noteworthy is that these two asteroids are passing so close to Earth on the same day and that NASA spotted them so far in advance.

"Things like this happen every day that we simply don’t know about because we don’t have the telescopes large enough to find them or surveys that are looking full-time," he said. "This demonstrates the system's working on some level, but we need larger telescopes and more of them to find objects that are coming this close."

This is something that could potentially save lives, but given today's economic carnage, it's difficult to see this program getting any additional funding anytime, oh, ever.

I'm surprised it hasn't been cut completely, other than it would be miserable press.  Of course, a GOP congress controlling the purse strings will probably not be so generous as the Democrats have been, especially given the GOP's virulently anti-science bent.

This would be the perfect program to start a fight with Obama over for the GOP.  And honestly, how much political capital would Obama expend to save something like NASA watching for falling rocks?

Gotta love it.