The Association of Space Explorers produced its report, “Asteroid Threats: A Call for Global Response,” last September. Our recommendations for an international decision-making framework operating through the United Nations are aimed at preventing a future asteroid impact on Earth. Today, ASE NEO committee chairman Rusty Schweickart and I are attending a conference at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln: Near Earth Objects: Risks, Responses, and Opportunities — Legal Aspects. We are working with attendees from the diplomatic, legal, and technical professions to advance thinking on how states and the international community can move toward a well-thought-out strategy for dealing with a threatening asteroid. The bureaucratic obstacles are daunting — the UN moves very slowly, and by consensus — so getting agreement through that body will take years. But we must start down that path to have a plan in place on what to do when the next Tunguska-sized object threatens Earth.
Our STS-59 crew took this image of Arizona's Meteor Crater in 1993 from a NASA training jet. A nickel-iron projectile about 50-75 meters across struck here about 50,000 years ago. (NASA)
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