An international group of astronauts, scientists and others have called for a rapid expansion of efforts to detect asteroids capable of causing widespread destruction on earth, warning that this is one of the biggest threats to humanity in the coming centuries.
Led by Lord Rees, Britain’s royal astronomer, and Brian May, a PhD in astrophysics as well as guitarist with the rock band Queen, the group said a hundredfold increase in the number of objects detected each year was necessary over the next decade.
Academic projects to detect and track asteroids that might one day collide with earth have been under way for more than 50 years. The work was boosted in 1998 when Nasa was given a decade to identify near-earth objects with a diameter of more than 1km — a size that would turn a collision into a potentially extinction-level event.