The US space agency NASA wants help in identifying all potentially hazardous asteroids zooming through the solar system.
NASA is calling on other countries, other government agencies, universities and backyard astronomers in what it is calling a “Grand Challenge” to detect and characterize potential threats from space.
“NASA already is working to find asteroids that might be a threat to our planet, and while we have found 95 per cent of the large asteroids near the Earth’s orbit, we need to find all those that might be a threat to Earth,” NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said.
The space agency is paying more attention to asteroids as it aims to send astronauts on a mission to a nearby asteroid in preparation for an eventual trip to Mars.
The potential danger of asteroids entering the Earth’s atmosphere highlighted by a meteor that burnt up in a blinding fireball in February over central Russia, creating a shockwave that blew out windows and collapsed some walls, leaving about 1,000 people injured.