Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

NASA Inspector General report appraises U.S. space agency’s NEO program.
Credit: ESA – P.Carril

NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has released an informative report that looks at the space agency’s efforts to identify and mitigate near-Earth object (NEO) hazards.

Inspector General Paul Martin released the report that assesses NASA’s efforts to identify and mitigate potential dangers caused by comets and asteroids that approach or enter the Earth’s atmosphere.

This review examines NASA’s NEO Program and assesses the Agency’s progress toward meeting statutory and other Program goals. Specifically, the OIG has taken a hard look at NASA’s allocation and use of resources and plans for the future of the NEO program.

One key finding is that, “even though the Program has discovered, categorized, and plotted the orbits of more than 11,000 NEOs since 1998, NASA will fall short of meeting the 2005 Authorization Act goal of finding 90 percent of NEOs larger than 140 meters in diameter by 2020. We believe the Program would be more efficient, effective, and transparent were it organized and managed in accordance with standard NASA research program requirements.”

Take a read of the full report, here:

http://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY14/IG-14-030.pdf

Also, take in this video about the report that features OIG’s Ray Tolomeo, Director, Science and Aeronautics Research, Office of Audits, at:

http://oig.nasa.gov/Video/Tolomeo_091514.html

Special thanks to Marcia Smith for flagging the availability of this report on her website: SpacePolicyOnline.com News.