Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: A draft UN treaty to determine what would have to be done if a giant asteroid was on a collision course with Earth is to be drawn up this year. The document would set out global policies including who should be in charge of plans to deflect any object. It is the brainchild of the Association of Space Explorers, a professional body for astronauts and cosmonauts. At the moment, Nasa is monitoring 127 near-Earth objects (NEO) that have a possibility of hitting the Earth. The association has asked a group of scientists, lawyers, diplomats and insurance experts to draw up the recommendations. The group will have its first meeting in Strasbourg in May this year. It is hoped the final document will be presented to the UN in 2009. "We believe there needs to be a decision process spelled out and adopted by the United Nations," said Dr Russell Schweickart, one of the Apollo 9 astronauts and founder of the Association of Space Explorers. The threat of an asteroid hitting the Earth is being taken more and more seriously as more and more NEOs are found. In the US, Congress has charged Nasa with the task of starting a more detailed search for life-threatening space rocks. "Congress has said that Nasa's efforts to date are not sufficient to the threat," said the US space agency's Dr Steven Chesley. "They have changed Nasa's targets so that the cataloguing and tracking of asteroids is part of its mandate."

Congress has asked the agency to mount a much more aggressive survey. At the moment, Nasa tracks all objects greater than 700m (2,300ft) in diameter. The agency's new goal is to track all objects greater than 70m (230ft) in diameter. To do this, the agency needs to use a new suite of telescopes. Alternatives include building a new Nasa-owned system or investing in other proposed telescopes such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) or the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-Starrs). Pan-Starrs is a wide-field telescope being developed at the University of Hawaii, whilst the LSST is a proposed ground-based instrument being developed by the not-for-profit LSST corporation based in the US. Nasa estimates that there are about 20,000 potentially threatening asteroids yet to be discovered.

View: Full Article | Source: BBC News

Oh goodie, the U.N. is getting on the stick about something. Personally, I'd trust boyscout troop 101 to be more effective at devising a plan to protect the Earth than I would the U.N. Just look at the job they did in the November War at protecting the Israelis. The U.N. is nothing more than a group of lowest common denominators who can't even figure out which shoe to put on first.

Oh-well, at least they have decided to vote on rather to form a commitee to study who should be responcible. That's something, I guess.