NASA has now completed its congress mandate to find 90 per cent of all the humanity killing asteroids near Earth. Their catalogue covers 93 per cent of all of these objects, which are so big that they would cause catastrophic damage on impact.
NASA’s Amy Mainzer, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California, presented the findings of the Spaceguard project at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. In addition to these 1000 rocks that are 1km in diameter or larger, Spaceguard has located 20,500 smaller asteroids also near Earth.
The chances of these asteroids hitting us any time soon is very low, however. According to Mainzer, it’s a “not a very likely event”.
That’s great news.
Now, where the hell are all the killing asteroids in the 7 per cent? [Reuters]