Asteroid-watchers worry about cosmic Katrina

Global threat … global response
Schweickart told the audience here that a third leg of the triad for protecting Earth from NEO impacts is probably the most challenging, albeit subtle. 

“It is complicated by two related facts,” he said. NEO impacts are a global threat, not a national one, and the only decision-making body representing, essentially, the whole planet is the United Nations — a body not known for timely, crisp decision making, he added.

Still, in this area, steps forward are being made.

The Association of Space Explorers — the professional organization of astronauts and cosmonauts — has formed a committee on NEOs that Schweickart chairs. Earlier this year, a technical presentation at a U.N. meeting in Vienna apprised them that this issue was coming at them.

While the United Nations has been brought the problem, Schweickart said, the Association of Space Explorers is committed to bringing them a solution. This solution will take the form of a draft U.N. treaty, or protocol, formulated in a series of workshops over the next two years.

“In these NEO Deflection Policy workshops we will gather together a dozen or so international experts in diplomacy, international law, insurance and risk management, as well as space expertise to identify and wrestle with these difficult international issues,” Schweickart noted. “Our goal is to return to the U.N. in 2009 with a draft NEO Deflection Decision Protocol and present it to them for their consideration and deliberation.”

Facing the challenge
In wrapping up his ISDC talk, Schweickart said the NEO challenge, in a sense, “is an entry test for humankind to join the cosmic community.” He reasons that, if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe “it is virtually certain that it has already faced this challenge to survival … and passed it.”

“Our choice is to face this infrequent but substantial cosmic test … or pass into history, not as an incapable species like the dinosaurs, but as a fractious and self-serving creature with inadequate vision and commitment to continue its evolutionary development,” Schweickart concluded.

Leonard David is senior space writer for Space.com and the former editor of Ad Astra, the official magazine of the National Space Society. The views of this article are the author’s and do not reflect the policies of the National Space Society.

ALL ABOUT APOPHIS An asteroid named Apophis is the current focus of cosmic risk assessment. If the 1,300-foot-wide space rock passes through a 2,000-foot-wide orbital "keyhole" in 2029, it could slam into Earth during a later encounter on April 13, 2036, experts say. Impact anywhere in the Pacific Basin would spark a tsunami that could do $400 billion worth of damage, former astronaut Russell Schweickart says. Currently, the risk of impact is set at 1 out of 6,250, but observations scheduled this weekend could take some of the uncertainty out of the orbital predictions. "With successful radar observations, there's a 50 percent chance that the 2036 impact possibility will go away," says Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office. The next opportunity to observe Apophis won't come until 2013. "Whatever we learn in the next couple of days is basically what we're going to know for the next seven years," Schweickart says. He and his scientific colleagues have proposed sending an "asteroid tractor" mission to Apophis in the 2013-2015 time frame to change its path if necessary, and study the asteroid even if a diversion proves unnecessary. For further background: NASA sets timetable for handling asteroid threat 'Asteroid tractor' could reduce cosmic risks Live Vote: What do you think of the asteroid threat B612 Foundation NASA: Near-Earth Object Program Alan Boyle / MSNBC.com

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