Report: NASA Can't Keep Up With Killer Asteroids

Source: Fox

AP - Wednesday, August 12, 2009

WASHINGTON —  NASA is charged with seeking out nearly all the asteroids that threaten Earth, but a new federal report says the space agency doesn't have the money to do the job.

Although Congress assigned the space agency this mission four years ago, the National Academy of Sciences says it never gave NASA money to build the necessary telescopes.

Even so, NASA says it's completed about one-third of its assignment with its current telescope system.

Click here for FOXNews.com's Space Center

Disaster movies like "Armageddon" and near misses in previous years may have scared people and alerted them to a serious issue. But when it comes to doing something about monitoring the threat, the academy concludes "there has been relatively little effort by the U.S. government."

And, according to the report, the U.S. government is practically the only government doing anything at all.

Click here for NASA/JPL's Asteroid Watch Web Site