Congress Hearing Reveals Asteroid Impact Threat: Hello, Doomsday!

It's apparently time for the government to prepare for a doomsday scenario--and pay for it. After last month's meteor strike in Russia that occurred on the same day as a close, asteroid flyby, members of Congress have asked NASA, White House and Air Force officials what they're currently doing in order to combat the threat of near-Earth asteroids that could impact our planet.

It's relatively unlikely that a massive meteoroid or asteroid will smash into Earth's surface. There are currently more than 1,300 potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) about 150 yards across that have a small chance of making an impact. Their orbital paths will take them close to Earth, but there's no guarantee that they'll crash land. But since asteroids move so quickly--about 27,000 to 33,000 miles per hour--relative to Earth, they carry enormous energy. This means that if one were to crash into Earth, there could be significant impacts.

So what can the government do to halt such a doomsday scenario? Not enough for Congress, apparently. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) stated that the report that NASA gave was "not reassuring." Currently, the space agency has only detected about 10 percent of the near-Earth objects that are wider than 87 meters across. Yet there may be hundreds of thousands of similar objects that are within one-third the distance from Earth to the sun.

That said, it's very unlikely that such as object would slam into Earth. "The odds of a near-Earth object strike causing massive causalities and destruction of infrastructure are very small, but the potential consequences of such an event are so large that it makes sense to take the risk serious," said John Holdren, science advisor to President Barack Obama, in an interview with Fox News. Because of the potential, NASA is continuing to try to track down these space objects.

Currently, the funding devoted annually to cataloguing and detecting these potential threats has risen from $5 million to more than $20 million over just the past couple of years. Yet in order to catalogue just 90 percent of these near-Earth objects, it would take NASA at least until the year 2030.

What does that mean for doomsday? Apparently there's not a lot that NASA can do. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in an interview with NBC News, "If it's coming in three weeks...pray. The reason I can't do anything in the next three weeks is because for decades we have put it off."