Given the clear need to address the threat from NEOs, the Kirsch Foundation has contracted with a Washington, DC, government relations firm to undertake a campaign for augmented funding in the 2003-04 congressional budget cycle for NEOs detection and tracking research. Our legislative campaign focused on securing $4 million in NASA’s fiscal year 2005 Space Science Budget to partially fund the operation of the PanSTARRS telescope project in Hawaii and support necessary requirements to detect, track and catalogue NEOs greater than 140 meters in diameter. We sought and found champions in both the House and Senate to make our $4 million appropriations request. Our congressional champions included Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Daniel Inouye (D-HI) and Representatives Anthony Weiner (D-NY), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA). In addition, we met with a variety of researchers and scientific experts dedicated to NEOs detection, identification and tracking work. Unfortunately, Congress had difficulty passing its budget at the end of 2004, and many critical programs were left unfunded, including our NEOs project.

While we weren’t successful in increasing NASA’s budget for NEOs identification and tracking through the congressional budget process, we increased the issue’s visibility among members of Congress and their staffs, and in the larger NEOs research community. Given the Foundation’s announced transition plans, it is our hope that others will continue to focus their time and energy on NEOs research, and that this issue will receive the attention and resources it deserves.

Why We Embarked on a Legislative Campaign
We believe that governments throughout the world should significantly increase their funding of research to identify and track NEOs that have the potential to destroy or significantly damage the Earth. Current funding is limited in comparison to the magnitude of the threat. Experts estimate that the odds of dying from an asteroid colliding with the Earth are 1 in 20,000 about the same as that of dying in a plane crash. Asteroids also have the potential to cause significant damage to the planet and there have been near misses, in astronomical terms, in recent years.

The technology and facilities that exist today are capable of finding and predicting the path of asteroids. NEOs with the potential to impact the Earth need to be predicted with sufficient advance notice for governments to mount a deterrent response. Over the last decade, NASA's policy has been to focus on finding at least 90% of the NEOs larger than one kilometer in diameter, estimating how many NEOs larger than 140 meters to 1 kilometer in diameter exist, and developing the technology to deflect the path of an asteroid away from the Earth.

In a September 2003 report, a 12-person NASA panel concluded that there is much more to be done to properly understand the threat from NEOs. While astronomers appear on track to identify asteroids larger than one kilometer by 2008, a half-million smaller NEOs – which hit every 1,000 years and could kill hundreds of thousands – remain to be found and are a substantial risk to Earth. NASA has been spending $3-4 million a year to find and characterize the estimated 1,100 large-sized NEOs, a goal it set in 1998 under pressure from Congress. The panel found that the risk of impact could be reduced by a further 90% by looking harder and longer using ground-based or space-based telescopes. Extended searches – those lasting 20 years or less – would cost a total of $236 million to $397 million, which is three to five times NASA's current NEO search budget.

Historical Grants
In the initial years of the Foundation's existence and up until 2003, we focused on providing grants to researchers who worked to identify and track NEOs through our Medical Science Project Grants.

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Press Coverage

Read new and historical press coverage about NEOs.