A challenge was
announced that an asteroid initiated an industry and partner day at NASA Headquarters
in Washington, is a large scale effort that will use multi – disciplinary collaborations
and a variety of partnerships with government agencies, international partners,
industry and citizen scientists. Kessler said, “We have a large data set
already associated with asteroids".
NASA is already working to find asteroids that might be a threat to our planet, and while we have found 95 percent of the large asteroids near the Earth's orbit, which needs to find all those that might be a threat to Earth.
NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said an agency news release. Grand Challenge is focussed on detecting and characterizing asteroids and learning how to deal with potential threats. It will also had public engagement, open innovation and citizen science to hep this global problem.
The purpose of the
Grand Challenge is a call to action to continue the awareness around the issue
of asteroid threats. The space agency has released an RFI – Request For
Information that seeks methods developed by the industry as a whole on how to
find the asteroids.
Efforts to develop
the technology to deflect asteroids have become particularly meaningful since a
meteor plunged to the earth near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February,
killing no one but reminding us of our vulnerability here on Earth.