[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THREATS FROM SPACE:
A REVIEW OF U.S. GOVERNMENT EFFORTS
TO TRACK AND MITIGATE ASTEROIDS
AND METEORS (PART I & PART II)
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 2013
and
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-14
and
Serial No. 113-17
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
DANA ROHRABACHER, California EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
RALPH M. HALL, Texas ZOE LOFGREN, California
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
Wisconsin DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ERIC SWALWELL, California
PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia DAN MAFFEI, New York
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois SCOTT PETERS, California
LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana DEREK KILMER, Washington
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
BILL POSEY, Florida ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut
CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming MARC VEASEY, Texas
DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona JULIA BROWNLEY, California
Thomas Massie, Kentucky MARK TAKANO, California
KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota VACANCY
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma
RANDY WEBER, Texas
CHRIS STEWART, Utah
VACANCY
C O N T E N T S
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 5
Written Statement............................................ 6
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
of Representatives............................................. 6
Written Statement............................................ 7
Statement by Representative Donna F. Edwards, Committee on
Science, Space and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives... 8
Written Statement............................................ 8
Witnesses:
The Honorable John P. Holdren, Director, Office of Science and
Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President
Oral Statement............................................... 10
Written Statement............................................ 12
Gen. William L. Shelton, Commander, U.S. Air Force Space Command
Oral Statement............................................... 19
Written Statement............................................ 20
The Honorable Charles F. Bolden, Jr., Administrator, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration
Oral Statement............................................... 27
Written Statement............................................ 30
Discussion....................................................... 38
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
The Honorable John P. Holdren, Director, Office of Science and
Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President........... 64
Gen. William L. Shelton, Commander, U.S. Air Force Space Command. 73
The Honorable Charles F. Bolden, Jr., Administrator, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration........................... 82
Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record
Submitted statement by Representative Steve Stockman, Committee
on Science, Space and Technology............................... 94
Letter submitted by Dr. Dante Lauretta, Department of Planetary
Sciences, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory....................... 95
Additional responses submitted by The Honorable Charles F.
Bolden, Jr., Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space
Administration................................................. 97
C O N T E N T S
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Page
Witness List..................................................... 102
Hearing Charter.................................................. 103
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 105
Written Statement............................................ 105
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
of Representatives............................................. 106
Written Statement............................................ 107
Witnesses:
Dr. Ed Lu, Chairman and CEO, B612 Foundation
Oral Statement............................................... 108
Written Statement............................................ 112
Dr. Donald K. Yeomans, Manager, Near-Earth Objects Program
Office, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Oral Statement............................................... 117
Written Statement............................................ 119
Dr. Michael F. A'Hearn, Vice-Chair, Committee to Review Near-
Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies, National
Resource Council
Oral Statement............................................... 126
Written Statement............................................ 128
Discussion....................................................... 136
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. Ed Lu, Chairman and CEO, B612 Foundation..................... 150
Dr. Donald K. Yeomans, Manager, Near-Earth Objects Program
Office, Jet Propulsion Laboratory.............................. 156
Dr. Michael F. A'Hearn, Vice-Chair, Committee to Review Near-
Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies, National
Resource Council............................................... 169
Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record
Submitted statement by Representative Steve Stockman, Committee
on Science, Space and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives 184
Submitted statement by Representative Donna F. Edwards, Committee
on Science, Space and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives 186
Planetary Society Report submitted by Representative Dana
Rohrabacher, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S.
House of Representatives....................................... 187
THREATS FROM SPACE:
A REVIEW OF U.S. GOVERNMENT EFFORTS
TO TRACK AND MITIGATE ASTEROIDS
AND METEORS, PART I
----------
TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 2013
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:11 a.m., in Room
2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
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Chairman Smith. The Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology will come to order. Good morning. I am going to
recognize myself for an opening statement, then the Ranking
Member, the gentlewoman from Texas, will be recognized as well.
Today's hearing is on a subject important to our Nation and
to our world. This is the first hearing of two on space threats
to Earth, reviewing U.S. Government efforts to track incoming
asteroids and meteors.
Although many may be only aware of this subject due to
recent events, it is actually one as old as our planet. And I
am going to hold up a copy of Time magazine from nearly 20
years ago where this topic was featured on the cover. Here is
Time, ``Cosmic Crash.'' This is 20 years ago. I don't know if
they were ahead of their time or not, but in any case, the
subject has been around for a while. This was actually given to
me by a former staff member, who I had research the subject 20
years ago as well.
Though the issue has been around for a number of years,
there are many questions still to be asked and answered. The
range of questions are broad and complex, from how to track an
object millions of miles away to how to respond if an asteroid
or meteor is headed toward Earth.
The two events of Friday, February 15, the harmless flyby
of asteroid 2012 DA14 and the not-so-harmless impact of a
meteor in Russia, are a stark reminder of the need to invest in
space science. The asteroid passed just 17,000 miles from
Earth, a distance less than the Earth's circumference. Fifty
years ago, we would have had no way of seeing the asteroid
coming, and even so, it was discovered by amateur astronomers.
The United States has come a long way in its ability to track
and characterize asteroids, meteors, comets and meteorites. But
we still have a long way to go.
NASA believes it has discovered 93 percent of the largest
asteroids in near-Earth orbit, those 1 kilometer or larger, but
what about the other seven percent remaining, about 70, or even
those smaller than 1 kilometer, estimated to be in the
thousands? An asteroid as small as 100 meters could destroy an
entire city upon a direct hit. Are we tracking those? The
meteor that struck Russia was estimated to be 17 meters, and
wasn't tracked at all. The smaller they are, the harder they
are to spot, and yet they can be life threatening.
The broad scope of our efforts include participation of
governments, research institutions, industries and amateur
astronomers in their backyard or on home computers. Some space
challenges require innovation, commitment and diligence. This
is one of them. And this Committee will strive to continue to
lead in this area. For all of the attention and publicity the
two events of February 15 received, it was still too late for
us to have acted to change the course of the incoming objects.
We are in the same position today and for the foreseeable
future unless we take actions now that improve our means of
detection.
Part of our discussion today is about how to achieve this
in the current budget environment. I do not believe that NASA
is going to somehow defy budget gravity and get an increase
when everyone else is getting cuts. But we need to find ways to
prioritize NASA's projects and squeeze as much productivity as
we can out of the funds we have. Examining and exploring ways
to protect the Earth from asteroids and meteors is a priority
for the American people and should be a priority for NASA.
We were fortunate that the events of last month were simply
an interesting coincidence rather than a catastrophe. However,
we still need to make investments and improvements in our
capability to anticipate what may occur decades from now, or
tomorrow.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
Prepared Statement of Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, House Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology
Good morning. Today's hearing is on a subject important to our
nation and to our world. This is the first hearing of two on Space
Threats to Earth, reviewing U.S. Government efforts to track incoming
asteroids and meteors.
Although many may be only aware of this subject due to recent
events, it is actually one as old as our planet. This is a copy of TIME
Magazine from nearly 20 years ago (1994) where this topic was featured
on the cover.
Though the issue has been around for a number of years, there are
many questions still to be asked and answered.
The range of questions are broad and complex, from how to track an
object millions of miles away to how to respond if an asteroid or
meteor is headed toward Earth.
The two events of Friday, February 15--the harmless flyby of
asteroid 2012 DA14 and the not so harmless impact of a meteor in
Russia--are a stark reminder of the need to invest in space science.
The asteroid passed just 17,000 miles from Earth, a distance less
than the Earth's circumference. Fifty years ago, we would have had no
way of seeing the asteroid coming, and even so it was discovered by
amateur astronomers.
The U.S. has come a long way in its ability to track and
characterize asteroids, meteors, comets and meteorites. But we still
have a long way to go. NASA believes it has discovered 93 percent of
the largest asteroids in near-Earth orbit, those one kilometer or
larger.
But what about the other seven percent remaining, about 70, or even
those smaller than one kilometer, estimated to be in the thousands? An
asteroid as small as 100 meters could destroy an entire city upon a
direct hit. Are we tracking those?
The meteor that struck Russia was estimated to be 17 meters, and
wasn't tracked at all. The smaller they are, the harder they are to
spot, and yet they can be life-threatening.
The broad scope of our efforts include participation of
governments, research institutions, industries and amateur astronomers
in their backyard or on home computers.
Some space challenges require innovation, commitment and diligence.
This is one of them. And this Committee will strive to continue to lead
in this area.
For all of the attention and publicity the two events of February
15 received, it was still too late for us to have acted to change the
course of the incoming objects. We are in the same position today and
for the foreseeable future unless we take actions now that improve our
means of detection.
Part of our discussion today is about how to achieve this in the
current budget environment.
I do not believe that NASA is going to somehow defy budget gravity
and get an increase when everyone else is getting cuts. But we need to
find ways to prioritize NASA's projects and squeeze as much
productivity as we can out of the funds we have.
Examining and exploring ways to protect the Earth from asteroids
and meteors is a priority for the American people and should be a
priority for NASA.
We were fortunate that the events of last month were simply an
interesting coincidence rather than a catastrophe.
However, we still need to make investments and improvements in our
capability to anticipate what may occur decades from now, or tomorrow.
Chairman Smith. That concludes my opening statement, and
the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Johnson, is recognized for
hers.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good
morning. I would like to welcome each of our witnesses to
today's hearing, and I would like to thank you for your
patience as we postponed this hearing a couple weeks ago.
As the chairman has indicated, this hearing was called in
response to recent events in which a large meteor unexpectedly
exploded in the sky over Russia, damaging property and injuring
people at almost the same time that a small asteroid passed
less than 18,000 miles from Earth's surface. While scientists
indicate that those two events apparently were unrelated, they
both serve as evidence that we live in an active solar system
with potentially hazardous objects passing through our
neighborhoods with surprising frequency.
Indeed, there is increasing scientific evidence that
impacts by large asteroids and comets have had profound
consequences for life on Earth at various times in the past,
even contributing to mass extinctions. While such events are
very rare, they obviously can cause untold damage, and are not
something we want to have happen if we can avoid it.
I think it is our increased scientific understanding of
near-Earth objects and their potential to impact the Earth that
has led Congress to take this subject seriously in recent
years. In that regard, this Committee has taken a leadership
role on these issues dating back to the efforts of former
Chairman George Brown, Jr. in the early 1990s, a time when
references to killer asteroids could still lead to giggles and
eye-rolling. Since then, Members on both sides of the aisle,
including Representative Rohrabacher, former Chairman Hall and
former Representative Giffords have taken an active and
productive interest in this topic, and progress has been made.
I hope that today's hearing will provide us with a good
update on the Federal Government's efforts to detect, monitor
and potentially mitigate such hazardous near-Earth objects.
Much has been accomplished over the last decade, and I look
forward to hearing about those efforts. In addition, I would
like to know if there are additional steps that we should be
taking as a country, whether an expanded detection program or
international collaborations or other such measures.
Well, we have much to discuss today and a distinguished
panel of witnesses to help us in our oversight. I look forward
to hearing from each of you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson
Good morning. I would like to welcome each of our witnesses to
today's hearing. And I would like to thank you for your patience when
we were forced to reschedule this hearing in the wake of the Washington
snow event two weeks ago.
As the Chairman has indicated, this hearing was called in response
to recent events in which a large meteor unexpectedly exploded in the
sky over Russia, damaging property and injuring people at almost the
same time that a small asteroid passed less than 18,000 miles from
Earth's surface. While scientists indicate that those two events
apparently were unrelated, they both serve as evidence that we live in
an active solar system, with potentially hazardous objects passing
through our neighborhood with surprising frequency.
Indeed, there is increasing scientific evidence that impacts by
large asteroids and comets have had profound consequences for life on
Earth at various times in the past, even contributing to mass
extinctions. While such events are very rare, they obviously can cause
untold damage, and are not something we want to have happen if we can
avoid it.
I think it is our increased scientific understanding of Near Earth
Objects and their potential to impact the Earth that has led Congress
to take this subject seriously in recent years. In that regard, this
Committee has taken a leadership role on these issues dating back to
the efforts of former Chairman George Brown, Jr. in the early 1990s--a
time when references to ``killer asteroids'' could still lead to
giggles and eye-rolling. Since then, Members on both sides of the
aisle, including Rep. Rohrabacher, former Chairman Hall, and former
Rep. Giffords have all taken an active and productive interest in this
topic, and progress has been made.
I hope that today's hearing will provide us with a good update on
the federal government's efforts to detect, monitor, and potentially
mitigate such hazardous Near Earth Objects. Much has been accomplished
over the last decade, and I look forward to hearing about those
efforts.
In addition, I would like to know if there are additional steps
that we should be taking as a country, whether an expanded detection
program or international collaborations or other such measures.
Well, we have much to discuss today and a distinguished panel of
witnesses to help us in our oversight. I look forward to hearing from
each of you.
Ms. Johnson. At this point I would like to yield the
remaining part of my time to Ms. Edwards, the Ranking Member of
the Space Subcommittee, for her comments.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
I just wanted to note for the record, Madam Chairwoman,
that this hearing is part one of the Committee's examination of
activities related to near-Earth objects. Subcommittee Chairman
Palazzo and I will hold a hearing of part two in early April,
and so this will be a continuation. And I wanted to note for
the record, Madam Chairwoman, that just a month ago after the
events that made the news, my colleague, Rush Holt, who is a
physicist here in Congress and former Assistant Director of the
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and I coauthored an op-ed
that appeared in the Washington Post on February 15 trying to
put into plain language what the challenges are, the research
challenges, what the threats are so that the American people
have some understanding that as both the ranking member and the
chairman have noted is not new for this Committee but poses
challenges for the American people, especially when it comes to
resources.
I think it is very fitting that this Committee is
considering U.S. government agency roles and responsibilities
in near-Earth object detection, tracking and mitigation, not
only because of the recent events, but because we have been at
the forefront in setting the U.S. policy on near-Earth objects
for the past two decades, and it was this Committee that
formulated the provisions in 2008, NASA authorization and
subsequent policy direction that called for the Office of
Science and Technology Policy to develop policies on emergency
response and to recommend a lead agency for protecting the
United States, and this depended on NASA, who we always seem to
call for 911 assistance in all space matters is in stark
contrast to the across-the-board cuts that NASA programs now
face under law.
And so Mr. Chairman, I am struck by how this complex
planetary protection issue is and how much farther we need to
go, and I am looking forward to today's testimony, and with
that I yield.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Edwards follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Donna F. Edwards
Thank you, Ranking Member Johnson.
It should be noted that this hearing is Part 1 of the Committee's
examination of activities related to near-Earth objects (NEOs).
Subcommittee Chairman Palazzo and I will hold Part 2 in early April.
It is fitting that this Committee is considering U.S. government
agency roles and responsibilities in NEO detection, tracking, and
mitigation, not only because of the recent events, but because this
Committee has been at the forefront in setting the U.S. policy on NEOs
for the past two decades.
The Committee's focus, beginning in the 1990s, has led to NASA's
establishment of a system for detection and tracking of large NEOs,
such as the 2012 DA14 asteroid. And it was this Committee that
formulated the provisions in the 2008 NASA Authorization that called
for the Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop policies on
emergency response and to recommend a lead agency (or agencies) for
protecting the United States from a NEO that is expected to collide
with Earth and, if necessary, for implementing a deflection campaign,
in consultation with international bodies.
As we will hear today from Dr. Holdren, NASA has a key role.
That should not come as a surprise. NASA's combined scientific,
technical, and engineering capability is absolutely essential to
informing critical decisions on mitigation of a potentially hazardous
object. This dependence on NASA, who we always seem to call for 911
assistance in all space matters, is in stark contrast to the across-
the-board sequester cuts to NASA's programs that are now law.
Mr. Chairman, I am struck with how complex this planetary
protection issue is and how much farther we need to go. That is why
Congress needs to ensure continued investment in and attention to
efforts that will address the potential threats of near-Earth objects.
I look forward to hearing from our distinguished group of panelists
on the priorities for Congress going forward.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. Thanks, Ms.
Edwards.
Without objection, other Members' opening statements will
be made a part of the record.
Our first witness is the Hon. John P. Holdren. Dr. Holdren
serves as the Director of the Office of Science and Technology
Policy, the Assistant to the President for Science and
Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors
on Science and Technology. Prior to his current appointment, he
was a professor in both the Kennedy School of Government and
the Department of Earth Science at Harvard. Dr. Holdren
graduated from M.I.T. with degrees in aerospace engineering and
theoretical plasma physics.
General William L. Shelton is the Commander of the United
States Air Force Space Command. Prior to assuming his current
position, General Shelton was the Assistance Vice Chief of
Staff and the Director of the Air Staff at the Pentagon. He
currently organizes, equips, trains and maintains mission-ready
space and cyberspace forces and capabilities for the North
American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Strategic Command.
General Shelton graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy with
a bachelor's degree in astronautical engineering. He also holds
a master's degree in this field from the U.S. Air Force
Institute of Technology.
Our final witness is the Hon. Charles F. Bolden, Jr., the
Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration. Administrator Bolden served as a pilot in the
Marine Corps, eventually earning the rank of General. In the
course of his military career, he participated in several
international campaigns. He also tested a variety of ground-
attack aircraft until his selection as an astronaut candidate
in 1980. Administrator Bolden held a number of positions at
NASA. He was able to participate in and support several space
shuttle flights, and he traveled to orbit four times aboard the
Space Shuttle, twice as a mission commander. For his many
achievements, Administrator Bolden was inducted into the U.S.
Astronaut Hall of Fame in May of 2006. He earned a bachelor's
degree in electrical science from the U.S. Naval Academy and a
master's degree in systems management from the University of
Southern California.
We welcome you all. Thank you for being here. And Director
Holdren, if you will begin?
TESTIMONY OF THE HON. JOHN P. HOLDREN, DIRECTOR,
OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY,
EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
Dr. Holdren. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Johnson,
Members of the Committee, I am pleased to be here today to
discuss U.S. activities to detect, to track, to characterize
near-Earth objects, or NEOs, and to develop the capability to
deflect any of dangerous size that are discovered to be on a
collision course with the Earth. This is, of course, a
particularly timely topic for reasons that all of you mentioned
in your opening statements.
Near-Earth objects are defined as those whose orbits bring
them within about 31 million miles of the Earth, a third of the
distance to the sun, some of them traveling close enough to
make an eventual collision a possibility. Those with maximum
physical dimension of more than a meter are generally referred
to as either asteroids or comets, while smaller objects are
referred to as meteoroids. All are called meteors upon fiery
transit of the Earth's atmosphere, and the pieces that strike
the surface are called meteorites.
Dozens of asteroids a meter or more in size enter the
Earth's atmosphere each year, of which only one on the average
is as big as 4 meters. Asteroids of these sizes burn up
harmlessly high in the atmosphere. Damage on Earth's surface is
likely only when the kinetic energy of the object is in the
range of a few hundreds of kilotons of TNT equivalent or above.
That corresponds at typical closing velocities to a stony
asteroid about 15 meters in equivalent diameter.
The 17-meter asteroid that blew up over Russia on February
15 released about 440 kilotons of energy. Asteroids with that
much energy strike the Earth only every 100 years or so. Larger
events like the 1908 asteroid explosion over Siberia, which
released about 15 megatons of energy and leveled trees over an
area of more than 850 square miles, are believed to be once-in-
a-thousand-years events. If an asteroid explosion of that size
were to occur over an urban area, it could cause hundreds of
thousands of casualties, but the probability of this occurring
is much smaller than the one-in-a-thousand-years probability I
just mentioned for one hitting the Earth at all, and that is
because land covers only 30 percent of the area of the Earth
and urbanized areas cover only two to three percent of the land
area.
As a result, the odds of a near-Earth object strike causing
massive casualties 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 seriously. Both the
Congress and recent Administrations have done so.
In 1998, Congress tasked NASA with locating within 10 years
at least 90 percent of all NEOs with a diameter of 1 kilometer
or greater, those with the potential to threaten civilization,
and in 2005, Congress directed NASA to detect, track, catalog
and characterize 90 percent of all NEOs with a diameter of 140
meters or greater by 2020. The 1-kilometer goal was achieved in
2011. The task of detecting 90 percent of NEOs larger than 140
meters is much more challenging but work on it is proceeding
apace.
More recent legislation directed the Office of Science and
Technology Policy to develop a policy for notifying relevant
authorities of an impending threat, to recommend a Federal
entity responsible for protecting the Nation from an expected
NEO collision, and to implement a policy of threat
notification. In an October 2010 letter to this Committee, I
reported on our progress on those tasks.
The budget for NASA's Near-Earth Object Observation program
has actually increased about fivefold since 2009 from a little
less than $4 million to $20.5 million in Fiscal Year 2012.
Beyond detection and tracking of potentially threatening
objects, moreover, the Administration is committed to exploring
and developing the capabilities necessary to protect the Earth
in general and the United States in particular from NEO
threats. NASA coordinates this work with the Departments of
Defense, State and Homeland Security including the latter's
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
I thank the Committee for its continued support and its
interest in this issue, and I will be pleased to take any
questions that the Members may have.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Holdren follows:]
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Chairman Smith. Thank you, Dr. Holdren.
General Shelton.
TESTIMONY OF GEN. WILLIAM L. SHELTON,
COMMANDER, U.S. AIR FORCE SPACE COMMAND
General Shelton. Mr. Chairman, Representative Johnson and
distinguished Members of the Committee, it is an honor to
appear before you today. It is also a privilege to appear with
my colleagues and teammates in the space community.
Space situational awareness underpins our entire spectrum
of space activities, and Air Force Space Command is proud of
our crucial role in monitoring activity in the space domain.
Specifically, we provide capabilities employed ultimately by
United States Strategic Command to detect, track, identify and
characterize human-made objects in Earth orbit. Our sensors
also are capable of detecting natural phenomena like bolides.
However, the Nation's current capability to track asteroids
is dependent upon NASA and other organizations such as the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory. For
example, during the recent asteroid 2012 DA14 event, the Joint
Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in
California used tracking data from NASA's Near Earth Object
Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to perform
collision avoidance screenings to ensure the safety of our
satellites. We remain committed to working closely with our
partners to ensure comprehensive space situational awareness
for the Nation.
I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you, and I
look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Shelton follows:]
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Chairman Smith. Thank you, General Shelton.
Administrator Bolden.
TESTIMONY OF THE HON. CHARLES F. BOLDEN, JR.,
ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL AERONAUTICS
AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
General Bolden. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee,
thank you for the opportunity also to appear today to discuss
the topic of near-Earth objects, and before I formally begin,
Mr. Chairman, I would like to congratulate you on your
appointment as the new Chairman of the House Science, Space,
and Technology Committee, and I look forward to working with
you in that capacity.
I would also like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and
Congresswoman Edwards and Congressman Holt, who is not here,
for the recent op-eds that you wrote that called more attention
to this for the American public, which I think is really
important.
The events of February 15, 2013, were a stark reminder of
why NASA has for years devoted a great deal of attention to
near-Earth objects and why this hearing is so timely and
important. The events of February 15 also highlight the wisdom
of Congress, the Administration and NASA in enabling a human
exploration of an asteroid.
The predicted close approach of a small asteroid called
2012 DA14 and the unpredicted entry and explosion of a very
small asteroid about 15 miles above Russia that Dr. Holdren
talked about earlier have focused a great deal of public
attention on the necessity of tracking asteroids and other
near-Earth objects and protecting our planet from them,
something this Committee and NASA have been working on for over
15 years. Again, NASA has been focused on tracking asteroids
and protecting our home planet from them well before these
recent events. In fact, NASA's focus in this area is evident
from our fivefold increase in near-Earth object budgets since
2010, and literally dozens of people are involved with some
aspect of our NEO research across NASA and its field centers.
In addition to the resources NASA puts into understanding
asteroids, the agency partners with university astronomers,
space science institutes and other agencies across the country
that are working to track and better understand these near-
Earth objects, often with grants, interagency transfers and
other contracts from NASA.
The new public attention is not hard to understand. The
coincidence of having these two very rare events happening on
the same day along with the unfortunate injuries of over 1,000
people on the ground in Russia made this a very big news event.
However, we should remember that the probability of any sizable
NEO impacting the Earth any time in the next 100 years is
extremely remote.
To put these two recent events in context, very small
objects enter the Earth's atmosphere all the time. Current
estimates are that on average, about 80 tons of material in the
form of dust grains and small meteoroids enter the Earth's
atmosphere every single day, objects the size of a basketball
arrive once a day, and objects as large as a car arrive about
once per week. Our Earth's atmosphere protects us from these
small objects, so nearly all are destroyed before hitting the
ground and pose no threat to life here on Earth. However, the
potential consequences of a significant impact are potentially
very great indeed. Consistent with NASA's role as established
by Congress and prescribed in the President's National Space
Policy, NASA has taken a leadership role to pursue capabilities
to detect, track and characterize near-Earth objects to reduce
the risk of harm to humans from an unexpected impact on our
planet.
NASA is also developing new vehicles and capabilities
including Orion and the Multipurpose Crew Vehicle and the Space
Launch System, which will enable human exploration of the solar
system beyond low-Earth orbit. As the President stated in his
April 15, 2010, speech at the Kennedy Space Center, NASA's
intention is to ``send astronauts to an asteroid for the first
time in history'' and NASA is working to accomplish this
mission by 2025. In fact, NASA leads the world in the detection
and characterization of NEOs and is responsible for the
discovery of about 98 percent of all known NEOs.
Now, here I will take a risk. There should be a chart
coming up very soon. It is. Thank you. As shown in this
graphic, the cumulative discovery of near-Earth asteroids
started picking up dramatically in 1998 with the start of
NASA's Spaceguard Search program, and the number of known near-
Earth asteroids has grown from a few hundred to nearly 10,000
in just 15 years, and I think it is not insignificant that it
goes almost asymptotic when you look at 2005 when the Congress,
NASA and the Administration really picked up the emphasis on
that.
NASA continues to make progress toward the goals set for us
by the Congress. To date, over 9,600 near-Earth asteroids of
all sizes have been found. Larger asteroids pose a greater
threat to the planet as a whole, and the percentage of
asteroids we have identified tracks this relationship. We found
95 percent of the largest NEOs over 1 kilometer in size. Our
current estimate is that we have also found about 60 percent of
the NEOs that are between 300 meters and 1 kilometer. As the
graphic shows, we still have some work to do to find NEOs in
the 140-meter class, and the next graphic please. You can see
here the total discovered per size and you can see where we are
lacking as the sizes go down.
Our remote ground-based observations of comets and
asteroids have been augmented by close-up reconnaissance data
from our science missions. From 1997 to 2001, NASA's near-Earth
asteroid rendezvous flyby flew by two main asteroid belts
before orbiting and landing on the near-Earth asteroid 433
Eros. Last August, our Dawn spacecraft departed the asteroid
Vesta and is now on its way to a 2015 rendezvous with Ceres,
the solar system's largest asteroid. Launching in 2016, NASA's
OSIRIS-REx mission will return a sample of up to 2.2 pounds
from an asteroid to Earth in 2023.
Of course, NASA is working to accomplish an astronaut visit
to an asteroid by 2025. This mission and the vital precursor
activities that will be necessary to ensure its success should
result in additional insight into the nature and composition of
NEOs and will increase our capability to approach and interact
with asteroids.
NASA has a long history of observing comets and asteroids
but as their importance as potentially hazardous objects has
become apparent, NASA has significantly increased its program
of detection, reconnaissance and characterization. We have
gained a nearly complete understanding of the population of
NEOs over 1 kilometer in size, and we are making marked
progress in protecting our planet from smaller but still
dangerous objects. While we emphasize that the risks form
impacts are remote, we remain absolutely committed to
fulfilling our responsibility to find and track near-Earth
objects. We will continue to scan the skies and update the
Congress and the world on what we find.
Again, thank you very much for the opportunity to testify
today, and I look forward to responding to any questions you
may have.
[The prepared statement of General Bolden follows:]
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Chairman Smith. Thank you, Administrator Bolden.
I recognize myself for questions, and let me address the
first one to Dr. Holdren and then perhaps, Administrator
Bolden, to you as well. There seems to be general agreement
based upon your testimonies that we are able to detect 90 to 95
percent of the near-Earth objects that are larger than 1
kilometer somewhere around 60 percent of the objects that are
over 300 meters, so my question is this. I haven't heard yet
nor have I seen yet what percentage of the near-Earth objects,
the incoming asteroids that are 100 meters, what percentage of
those objects are we able to detect, 100 meters being, I think,
Dr. Holdren, you described in your written testimony as the
size of a city destroyer. So what percentage of the 100-meter
near-Earth objects can we detect, and do you have a figure for
that?
Dr. Holdren. I believe at this point that number would be a
little under 10 percent. The number for 140 meters and above is
10 percent. The 100 would be a little under 10 percent.
Chairman Smith. Administrator Bolden, do you agree with
that?
General Bolden. Yes, sir, that was on that second chart I
showed where it looks like the less than 10 percent for----
Chairman Smith. Okay. How many objects are we talking about
that we are not able to detect that might be the city
destroyers?
General Bolden. Numbers of objects?
Chairman Smith. Yes.
General Bolden. Mr. Chairman, I don't know that answer, and
that is one thing I cannot take for the record because----
Chairman Smith. What was the 10 percent?
Dr. Holdren. I can answer that question, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Okay, Dr. Holdren.
Dr. Holdren. The estimates of how many objects exist, near-
Earth objects in the range of 140 meters or above are between
13,000 and 20,000 objects. So that is the number of which we
have detected 10 percent. That is the much more challenging
goal, which the Congress put before us to identify 90 percent
of those by 2020.
Chairman Smith. Roughly 2,000 objects that are city
destroyers, we are not detecting. Is that roughly right?
Dr. Holdren. No, more, because the number we are detecting
is 10 percent of 13,000 to 20,000 so----
Chairman Smith. I was going in----
Dr. Holdren. So you were going the other way.
Unfortunately, the number undetected----
Chairman Smith. I was going 1,300 to 2,000, and I was going
to the larger figure. That is why I said 2,000.
General Bolden. So the number of undetected potential city
killers is very large. It is in the range of 10,000 or more.
Chairman Smith. Ten thousand or more. Okay. Not reassuring,
but what is reassuring, we hope, is the unlikelihood that one
of those city destroyers would actually hit a city. As you
pointed out, two to three percent of the earth's area is urban
area.
Administrator, what programs, what improvements, what
developments can we expect in the next, say, 2 years or 5 years
to be able to better detect these thousands of near-Earth
objects that might be life threatening?
General Bolden. Mr. Chairman, we continue our work, our
collaboration with our international partners. That is very
important. As Dr. Holdren mentioned earlier, he didn't specify
but it was a Spanish astronomer, amateur astronomer actually,
or I think----
Chairman Smith. Do you expect improvements in Earth-based--
I mean telescopes, for example, that will enable us to better
detect these?
General Bolden. What we are really looking at is not
improvements but increase in the numbers of space-borne assets.
We really need to have space-borne assets that are able to
look. We are cooperating right now with a Space Act Agreement
with a private company called B612 that will be engaged in the
identification and characterization of asteroids, and my hope
is that there will be more.
Chairman Smith. Okay. And what percentage of these
thousands would we be able to detect in the next few years that
we are not detecting now? Any idea?
General Bolden. If you talk about the 140-meter class, our
estimate right now is at the present budget levels--that is
present budget levels, not the going-down budget levels--it
will be 2030 before we are able to reach the 90 percent level
as prescribed by Congress to detect and characterize those 90
percent of the 140-meter class.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you for the answer, though,
again, that is not particularly reassuring. Maybe we can help
you out with the budget. Don't know.
General Shelton, last question for you. Was the Department
of Defense aware of the meteor that exploded over Russia?
General Shelton. Mr. Chairman, not until we were tipped off
by NASA.
Chairman Smith. And that was after the fact, or how far
before the fact?
General Shelton. No, it was--I want to say it was two or
three days preceding----
Chairman Smith. Two or three days before it exploded over
Russia? Okay.
General Shelton. I am sorry. You said the explosion. I was
talking about DA14.
Chairman Smith. No, I am talking about the meteor that
exploded over Russia.
General Shelton. We had no insight in that at all.
Chairman Smith. Even with satellites, even with everything
else?
General Shelton. We were aware of the event when it
occurred.
Chairman Smith. And not before?
General Shelton. Not before.
Chairman Smith. I just have to ask you, how then are we
going to be aware of, say, incoming missiles if we couldn't
detect the meteor exploding over Russia?
General Shelton. Now, we did detect it. We were aware of
the event.
Chairman Smith. But at the time of the event, not before?
General Shelton. Yes, sir, and we would have to take that
into a different forum to talk in more detail.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, and that concludes my
questions. The Ranking Member, Ms. Johnson, is recognized for
hers.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much.
Dr. Holdren, in October 2010, the Congressional response to
the direction in the 2008 NASA Authorization Act described
roles and responsibilities for NASA, FEMA, DOD and State but is
silent who has the overall responsibility, and I was wondering
who in this Administration is the--who has the single
responsibility to oversee the other activities of other
agencies?
Dr. Holdren. Well, NASA is responsible, has the overarching
responsibility for detection and notification. NASA notifies
FEMA, they notify the Department of Defense. On the question of
mitigation, who would have the responsibility if an asteroid
were discovered to be on a collision course, that would depend
on the size of the asteroid and the amount of notice we had.
For some deflection missions, you would want NASA to be in
charge. For other kinds of deflection missions, you would want
DOD to be in charge. So it does not make sense from the
standpoint of the mitigation mission to specify in advance
which agency would do it, but the notification--identification
and notification responsibilities are unambiguous.
Ms. Johnson. So when there is mitigation, do all of you
come together or who takes the lead? What determines who takes
the lead?
Dr. Holdren. In that event, we would certainly all come
together, and we are in fact exercising those kinds of
communications. There is actually an exercise coming up in the
middle of next month when we will exercise those interactions,
communications and the exercise of responsibilities. There is a
workshop actually coming up at the beginning of next month in
which those interagency interactions will be further discussed
and delineated.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. The gentleman from
California, Mr. Rohrabacher, is recognized for his questions.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
We are talking about space debris and near-Earth objects
that are--it seems to me that these two issues are not just
American issues, and we are talking about the cost all this,
what are we talking about in terms of over a 20-year period,
the costs of actually coming up with a deflection and the cost
of actually making the determination of what is heading in our
direction? Dr. Holdren, or do any of you have estimates of
cost?
General Bolden. Mr. Rohrabacher, I can give you an estimate
right now. We do it incrementally so we believe we have to
detect and characterize first and then we have to concern
ourselves, as Dr, Holdren says, with who is going to do the
mitigating action or the deflection action. We have two
concepts. One is about three-quarters of a billion dollars for
an infrared-based sensor that is placed in space, something
that orbits Venus or at least is in geosynchronous orbit. B612,
that I mentioned, their estimate for their effort is about a
half a billion dollars, about $500 million dollars. So we are
roughly in that range.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Is that just for that one sensor that we
are talking about?
General Bolden. That is just for--to try to put something
in space that will help us to identify and characterize. I
think all three of us agree, ground-based systems are great,
Arecibo and others, but if you really want to find and detect
asteroids, near-Earth objects early enough that we can do
something, then you want that vehicle----
Mr. Rohrabacher. And the cost is?
General Bolden. I gave you an example of two. I will take
it for the record to get back to you. I think what you are
asking for is a lifecycle cost for a program to mitigate.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right.
General Bolden. I don't think any of us have--we have not
developed that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, it is in the billions of dollars,
correct?
General Bolden. Oh, yes, sir.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
General Bolden. You know, if one detection device is almost
a billion----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Now, let me suggest that perhaps the
billion dollars, and that would provide protection for not just
the United States but for the world.
General Bolden. Sir, anything we are talking about--this is
not--as you pointed out, this is not an American issue.
Anything that we do protects the planet. Anything that our
international partners do protects the planet, and that is why
you hear me talk all the time about the critical importance of
international collaboration.
Mr. Rohrabacher. That is what I want to ask you about on
this. What steps have we taken to bring countries together that
could contribute those billions of dollars as well as our own?
General Bolden. Well, the U.N. Organization for Peaceful
Cooperation of Space, U.N. COPUOS, has a very active ongoing
activity and trying to help bring nations together and looking
at detecting and tracking NEOs. We are a participant in that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. There is not just one organization that is
aimed specifically or--when was the last meeting of groups of
people who represent countries that might want to get involved
and contribute and have an overall part?
Dr. Holdren. Congressman Rohrabacher, I can take that one.
There was a meeting in Vienna in mid-February of this year just
a month ago under the auspices of the U.N. Committee on
Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. It was agreed there to stand up
an international asteroid warning network and to stand up as
well an international body that would deal with the mitigation
question. There is already underway something called AIDA, the
Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment, which is a joint
effort of the European Space Agency and NASA, and I should add
that the detection network that we already have is highly
international in character. As Administrator Bolden mentioned,
it was actually a Spanish observer who first discovered the
asteroid that made the near miss on February 15. The Minor
Planet Center, which is in substantial part funded by NASA and
hosted by the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, is
actually under the overall auspices of the International
Astronomical Union, so it is all very international.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I would suggest that number one, the cost
of deflection of course, we are talking about the cost of
detection, in one situation, the cost of having a deflection
system is even more. I would suggest that this is one area of
leadership that the United States could really take a role in
and it would be good for all and it would create an
international spirit of what we want to create. I would suggest
especially including Russia in on this, and they may be able to
make some major contributions, save us some money and actually
make it a more effective system.
And with that said, I would like to include all countries
except China. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher. The gentlewoman
from Maryland, Ms. Edwards, is recognized.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to ask Dr. Holdren, the National Science Foundation
has indicated a next major new start as the Large Synoptic
Survey Telescope, the LSST, which is intended to detect and
catalog potentially hazardous objects, and what I would like to
know is, one, what the technological contribution would be if
the LSST were to make the overall detection and cataloging
effort possible, and General Bolden, you talked about the
prospect of land-based systems versus systems that we would put
outside in our solar system, but the cost, to me, it seems
would be rather significantly different. And then I would like
to have some understanding of whether there might be some cost
sharing that NASA might consider with improvements to the LSST
to try to optimize it for NASA's use, and get a sense as well
of whether the challenges that we are facing and not meeting
the 2025 deadline that--guideline that we have highlighted from
the Committee. Are those technological challenges principally?
Are they funding challenges? Is it some combination of
cooperation challenges? I would like to better understand that,
especially in this fiscal environment.
Dr. Holdren. Well, let me just make a start and then I will
turn it over to Administrator Bolden. The Large Synoptic Survey
Telescope would be an important addition to our capabilities
but it is important to understand that all these capabilities
work in tandem, that is, they share information. Some of the
telescopes are better at detection. Others are better at
characterizing the orbit or determining the reflectivity and
the likely composition of the object, and so one always has to
think of this as a network. We have telescopes in Arizona, we
have telescopes in Italy, we have telescopes in the Czech
Republic, and they are all linked together and they are all
part of a network that provides the overall capability we have
to detect these objects. The LSST alone when it comes fully to
fruition would still not be able to enable us to identify and
characterize 90-plus percent of the objects in less than about
a dozen years. But in combination, the LSST and an orbiting
infrared telescope of the kind Administrator Bolden was talking
about could lower that time to something in the range of 6 to 8
years.
General Bolden. Congresswoman, the only thing I will add,
you know, we flew an infrared imaging satellite called WISE,
and then we repurposed it while on orbit to look for asteroids,
and we discovered hundreds in the deep field of the solar
system, the universe, actually. It is that type of instrument
that I talk about. That is what B612 wants to do. We are
looking at ways to cost-share. The nucleus organization that
Congressman Rohrabacher mentioned involving Russia, the 5-
member organizations of what we call the International Space
Station team, and that is 15-plus European nations, Russia,
Japan, Canada and the United States, although our primary
responsibility is operating the International Space Station,
when the heads of agency get together, we talk about
everything, and one of the big things we talk about is the
threat of near-Earth asteroids.
At risk of getting in trouble because Congressman
Rohrabacher and I have a healthy agreement to disagree, and I
will say this, it will be the decision of this Congress as to
whether or not we ever cooperate or participate with China. It
is the elephant in the room. I don't talk about it because my
public affairs and communications people tell me not to talk
about it, but I don't deal with China by direction of this
Congress. We are the only agency of the Federal Government that
does not have bilateral communications with China. This is an
issue for the world. This is not an issue for the United
States, so although Congressman Rohrabacher and I----
Ms. Edwards. Well, I will let Congressman Rohrabacher take
his time talking about China, and I am sure we could have a
whole hearing on it. Before we go, though, I wanted General
Bolden to--you know, the whole identified mission that the
President has set out to go to an asteroid, it seems rather
lackluster, and so I have always had questions about whether
ought to be a goal or we ought to think about, you know, sort
of the tradeoff, Mars, instead. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Edwards. The gentleman from
Texas, Mr. Hall, chairman emeritus, is recognized for his
questions.
Mr. Hall. Mr. Chairman, of course I thank you for holding
this very important hearing, and I thank the witnesses for
their very valuable testimony.
I had the privilege of serving on this Committee since
1981, and this topic has been the subject of periodic review
and legislative direction, as the witnesses noted, in the 1990s
during consideration of a NASA authorization bill. This matter
came up, and it was really a discussion about asteroids. We had
really a hearing on asteroids, as Mr. Rohrabacher remembers,
and it was reported at that time that one had just passed the
Earth that no one knew anything about but it missed us by 15
minutes. I hated to ask, was that just as good as it missing us
by 1 minute or 30 seconds or what, but just the enormity of the
damage that they could do to us. I offered an amendment at that
time to set a goal of finding and cataloging within 10 years
this population of comets and asteroids in an effort to be
coordinated with the Department of Defense and space agencies
of other countries. Other countries were invited to that
hearing, but also told that we ought to have a world group
because as Charlie said, it is a world problem. They were
interested in attending but they weren't interested in
contributing anything to it, so none of them showed up for the
hearing.
But as our witnesses stated, from 1998 until 2011, more
than 90 percent of near-Earth objects with a diameter of 1
kilometer or greater have been located. So today we know more
about these but we also have more work to do, especially those
that are smaller that could still have a devastating impact if
they hit the Earth.
So Dr. Shelton, let me ask you this. What capabilities do
we need that we don't currently possess to detect and track
asteroids that might pose a threat to the Earth?
General Shelton. Sir, if you are talking about Department
of Defense capabilities----
Mr. Hall. What do we have to do? What should we do?
General Shelton. Well, if you are talking about Department
of Defense capabilities, we are focused on things in Earth
orbit. Our sensors, and we have got a variety of them, are not
focused on beyond the Earth.
Mr. Hall. Well, once an object has been identified, what
are our means of tracking it and how much time would we have to
prepare if there were a threat to Earth?
Dr. Holdren. Maybe I can take that, Congressman Hall. First
of all, how much notice we have depends on the size of the
object. The bigger it is, the further away we can see it and
the more time we have. So there are some objects that we know
are coming years in advance. There are other objects that are
still big enough to cause damage that we only know about weeks
in advance or days in advance. Obviously, we need to improve
the capability to give us a large amount of notice, enough
notice to mount a deflection mission if we see one on a
collision course. Some of the capabilities we have been talking
about, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, the orbiting
telescope that the B612 Foundation is working with NASA to
develop, all those capabilities will increase the warning time
with respect to asteroids big enough to do serious damage. And
again, the deflection options that would then be open to us
would depend on the size of the object and the amount of notice
we had. They would include----
Mr. Hall. Well, excuse me. The one that hit Russia, there
is no question about that, and that is about all we know about
it, why didn't we know that was coming or on its way?
Dr. Holdren. It came out of the sun, Congressman Hall. It
came from a direction where our telescopes could not look. We
cannot look into the sun.
Mr. Hall. Well, if we can't make that determination as to
where it is going to come from, we ought to be able to do
something no matter where it comes from if it is going to hit
the Earth.
Dr. Holdren. That is one of the reasons that an orbiting
telescope----
Mr. Hall. That is why we are having this hearing today to
ask you three men who know a heck of a lot more than we know
about it to tell us.
Dr. Holdren. Well, I would say, Congressman Hall, that the
most important single thing we could do to improve our capacity
to see any asteroid of potentially damaging size coming would
be an orbiting infrared telescope of the sort that the B612
Foundation is working on.
Mr. Hall. I thank you. I asked the question, if we saw one
come toward Omaha, what could they do about it, and they said
they could use a laser, and I went on and asked a second
question. I said, well, could the laser hit it right in the
middle because I didn't want to cause any more trouble than I
had with Mr. Rohrabacher. I wasn't going to suggest that half
of it hit Los Angeles and the other half hit New York. I
suggested that half of it might go to the Pacific Ocean and the
other half go to the Atlantic Ocean. They really didn't have an
answer for that, and I doubt if you have.
Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all, it would not be practical
to have a laser powerful enough to split it in half. What you
can do in principle if you have a very powerful laser is to
cause jets of material heated by the laser to fly off of the
asteroid and that is essentially the equivalent of a jet engine
pushing the asteroid off course. There are other approaches to
deflecting an asteroid. Those include hitting it with a very
heavy impacter. They include approaching it, as we have already
approached with robotic probes a number of asteroids and
pushing it or towing it.
Mr. Hall. I thank you, and I will write you a letter for
some more, and thank you. I yield back my time.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Hall. Those were interesting
answers, Dr. Holdren. I appreciate that.
The gentlewoman from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you all for your interesting testimony.
It has been well established in this testimony that the
probability of an occurrence of a sizable NEO colliding with
the Earth is quite small. I believe, General Bolden, you said
extremely remote in your testimony. But it is also clear that
the consequences could be enormous. For example, a strike,
depending on the size of an asteroid, could bring a cloud of
dust rivaling the most powerful volcanic explosion, or
depending on where it hits could cause an enormous tsunami that
would flood and destroy coastal regions. And I know you are all
striving as we are to find the appropriate balance for
investment without being unnecessarily alarmist.
In the district--back to where it hits. In the district I
represent in Oregon, there is a significant threat of a
tsunami, especially from earthquakes. That is very real.
Response preparedness is already a priority issue for my
constituents. In fact, when I was in the legislature, we passed
a bill that required the State to plan for the impacts of a
9.0-magnitude earthquake and a resulting tsunami, which
scientists had determined would occur, will occur at some point
in the future, so it is not planning for if, it is planning for
when. And the State just released its resilience plan, which
was partially funded through a FEMA grant, in February. The
plan acknowledges the importance of preparing communities and
infrastructure for a catastrophic event but it also places
significant focus on the ability to respond once the event has
occurred.
And of course, this type of challenge has implications in
the context of today's conversation. How much do we plan for
detection, how much do we plan for response? Of course, we
should be investing in the science that will help us detect and
prevent the impacts of NEOs but we also need to consider how we
will respond if it not possible to alter the orbits and stop
these NEOs from colliding.
Dr. Holdren, your 2010 report indicates that depending on
the projected damage and location, FEMA could help provide
Federal assistance and coordinate local emergency services
personnel into integrated disaster response task forces. So
could you talk a little bit more, please about how FEMA is
approaching this role? How will they take into account
different demographic and geographic characteristics in any
given area? Thank you.
Dr. Holdren. Wow, that is a really challenging question.
You know, as we know, FEMA has a wide range of capabilities for
responding to a wide variety of different kinds of emergencies
and disasters. We are in the process, as I mentioned, of
conducting exercises of various kinds in which FEMA is a
participant, and thinking about and trying to work out the
details of response strategies, depending on the nature of the
impact, but as your question points out, those impacts could be
very different. If a large asteroid strikes the ocean, as you
point out, the impacts would largely come through the tsunami
phenomenon, which is of course a phenomenon with which FEMA
must also reckon since tsunamis can be caused in other ways. If
a strike occurred over an urban region with sufficient force,
the damage would resemble in some ways the damage from a
massive earthquake, which is another event with which FEMA is
familiar and prepared to respond. But these are going to be big
challenges. I would not minimize the difficulty of responding
adequately if a substantial asteroid strike should occur in the
size range that we need to be particularly worried about.
Ms. Bonamici. And so what efforts are being made to engage
the existing emergency response infrastructure?
Dr. Holdren. Well, as I say, we are actually exercising
those with tabletop exercises and with larger-scale exercises
in which the various agencies go through a simulated event of
this kind, and those kinds of exercises are really the best way
we have when combined with analytical tools to figure out how
to bring our capabilities effectively to bear.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much.
And either General Bolden or General Shelton, do you have
any comments about finding that balance between preparing for
detection and preparing for how we respond?
General Bolden. Congresswoman, I would just echo what you
said. You hit the right word, and that is balance. You know, we
could come out of this hearing and decide that we want to
really pour money into NEO detection and characterization, and
that would not be the right thing to do because there has to be
a balance. My recommendation would be the President's budget
from 2013, I think was pretty good. We have a plan that Dr.
Holdren talked about but it depends on the passage of that
budget. Going into 2014, we will come back again and try to
give you what we see as a funding level to support a plan that
Dr. Holdren addresses. So that is where we have to cooperate,
Congress and the Administration, in striking that proper
balance.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much. My time is expired. I
yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici. The gentleman from
Alabama, Mr. Brooks, is recognized.
Mr. Brooks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Reading from Dr. Holdren's testimony, it says ``Depending
on its composition and velocity, an asteroid of 140 meters in
diameter could have an impact energy in the range of 50 to 500
megatons of TNT equivalent and would be capable of causing
destruction over a large region,'' emphasis there 50 to 500
megatons, and I have got other notes here that suggest that the
Hiroshima atomic bomb was roughly 13 kilotons, so much, much,
much, much smaller. If you could, could you please describe
with greater detail what you mean by a ``large region''?
Dr. Holdren. The size you are talking about, 140 meters,
and you have got the numbers exactly right, could devastate the
better part of a continent.
Mr. Brooks. We are talking about a very large region.
Dr. Holdren. The fortunate--the only fortunate thing is
that the estimated frequency with which objects of that size
strike the Earth is about one in 20,000 years, or a probability
of one in 20,000 each year. Nonetheless, this falls directly in
the category that we were talking about, low probability, very
high consequence, therefore we need to take the risk seriously
and we need to make the kinds of investments that would enable
us to deflect an asteroid of that size were one to be
discovered on a collision course.
Mr. Brooks. And you also used the word ``destruction'' in
the context of this continent-sized area. Would human life be
able to withstand that kind of impact and the way in which you
use the word ``destruction''?
Dr. Holdren. Well, clearly, if an asteroid of that size
struck on land, there would be very large loss of life. If it
struck in the ocean, it would produce, in all likelihood, a
very large tsunami, which would be associated with large loss
of life. If you say would humans survive on the Earth, the
likelihood is yes. But there are concerns about the amount of
dust and smoke that could be lofted into the atmosphere by such
an impact.
Mr. Brooks. Do you have a judgment as to whether humans
would survive on the continent impacted, if you limit it just
to the impact continent?
Dr. Holdren. No, I believe the answer is yes. Is aid a
substantial part of a continent. A bigger one, bigger still
than 140 meters, could be a continent destroyer, and a bigger
one still could be a civilization destroyer. You know, the one
that hit 65 million years ago near what is now the Yucatan
Peninsula is thought to have led to the extinction of the
dinosaurs and most else that lived on Earth at the time.
Mr. Brooks. And if I read your written testimony correctly,
that was roughly 10 kilometers estimated size?
Dr. Holdren. Yes.
Mr. Brooks. Moving on, looking at the notes that I have
been given by the HASC Committee, it suggests that we have
identified so far thousands of objects in space, near-Earth
objects in space, that are 300 to 500 meters in diameter,
roughly 1,100, 1,200 that are roughly 500 to 1,000 meters in
diameter, and roughly 900 that are a kilometer or more in
diameter. So what I would like to know is, how much advance
warning would the Earth's population need if, say, one of these
kilometer or larger size objects for us to be able to do
something to prevent that object from hitting the Earth and
causing the kind of massive devastating that you have
described?
Dr. Holdren. Today, we would probably need years to mount
such a mission. Over time, as we develop our capabilities to
deal with this kind of threat, the lead time could be smaller.
Mr. Brooks. Let me focus in on that. How many years would
we need? Let us say we found out today that there is an object
of this size that is going to hit the Earth. How many years
would we need today if we were to do whatever is necessary to
try to put ourselves in a position to save the planet?
Dr. Holdren. I think I will refer that question to General
Bolden.
General Bolden. Well, if we did it according to the
President's budget presently, 2025 is the time that we think we
will be able to send a human to an asteroid acting with some
robotic means. That is on----
Mr. Brooks. Let me interject for a moment. Let us assume
that we know one is going to hit the planet, in which case I
assume that we are going to accelerate things as quickly as we
can. What is the fastest we can get it done where we could
protect ourselves upon discovery of a 1-kilometer or larger
object going to hit the Earth?
General Bolden. Congressman, I will take it for the record
and get back to you, but now you are talking about an intense
effort, which, I mean, that significantly shortens the time.
Mr. Brooks. Well, we would be intense.
General Bolden. We have the systems and the technology
available now to do that. You are talking about just pouring
unlimited funds into it, and conceivably you could do it in 4
or 5 years. I don't know. But let me get back to you. Don't
quote me on a number yet. But, I will work with General Shelton
and his captain and, seriously, we will get you an answer.
Mr. Brooks. Well, thank you for being here and testifying
before us. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the time that you have
allotted, and whatever time that is, I would love to help you
shortening it.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Brooks. The gentleman from
California, Mr. Swalwell, is recognized for his questions.
Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
Ranking Member Johnson.
General Bolden, I represent Livermore, California, which
has two of the NNSA labs, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia, and I
imagine that when you talk about systems and technology, and if
we were to require a weapon to deflect something that was
incoming, a near-Earth object that was incoming, that some of
that technology will have to be or has been designed at one of
those laboratories.
General Bolden. So if that a question----
Mr. Swalwell. Yes.
General Bolden. If that were the decision, but again, I
would go back to what Dr. Holdren said earlier. I would not
consider a weapon to deflect or to save Earth against this type
of threat. I would consider the development of appropriate
technologies that could enable us to--we are talking about
earliest detection, you are talking about deflecting. I mean,
it is a tiny amount if you catch it far enough out.
Mr. Swalwell. Let us assume that it is late-stage
detection. I imagine our choices get limited, right?
General Bolden. Yes, sir. That is not my bailiwick anymore.
I don't do bombs and rockets.
Mr. Swalwell. Well, General Shelton, those two laboratories
in my district, I imagine they would play a critical role if we
had a late-stage detection of one of these near-Earth objects.
General Shelton. Yes, sir, I would think so. I mean, there
are only a limited number of ways to generate the amount of
energy required and probably nuclear energy is what we are
talking about here.
Mr. Swalwell. Is there a way to guarantee that one of these
near-Earth objects does not hit on a Friday? Because right now
in my district, all of the Federal employees at those
laboratories are furloughed on Fridays. And I know in
Congresswoman Edwards' district, some of those NASA employees
that are trying to detect these incoming objects, I think they
are going to be furloughed on Fridays too. So----
General Bolden. No, sir.
Mr. Swalwell. No way to----
General Bolden. We are not planning to furlough employees.
I just wanted to clarify that. So they will be there on Friday.
Mr. Swalwell. Okay.
General Bolden. But in seriousness, I have to go back again
to say several things. One, these are remote occurrences. Two,
the plan that the President has put forward I think will
adequately address our technical capability to be able to
deflect an asteroid in due time. If we find that we are
tracking literally thousands of asteroids today. If the
civilization destroyer that Dr. Holdren talks about, I mean, if
we can't discover that early enough, then there is something
wrong with our systems.
Mr. Swalwell. Sure. So in our district, it is a fact: there
are furloughs at our nuclear laboratories, and you are not
concerned at all that sequestration affects our readiness to
protect----
General Bolden. Sir, that wasn't the question you asked.
Mr. Swalwell. So my question is----
General Bolden. I am very concerned with the effects of
sequestration but that wasn't the question, and so yes, I am
very concerned about the effects of sequestration on all of our
ability to do what it is you ask us to do. You are talking
about impacting our ability to keep our facilities operating
safely. You are talking about just the mental strain on our
employees not knowing whether they are going to be able to come
to work tomorrow. I try to assure them every time I can that I
am not planning to furlough anybody, but they know better than
I do that the Congress could take some action and all of a
sudden the Administrator doesn't have a clue what he is talking
about because now I have got to lay people off. My intention is
not to do that. If your question is, is there a bad effect of
sequestration, yes, sir.
Mr. Swalwell. That is my question.
General Bolden. Yes, sir.
Mr. Swalwell. How about for General Shelton?
General Shelton. I will tell you, sir, just about my every
waking moment these days is based on this topic. I just pulled
the trigger on $508 million of reductions in just my major
command alone from now until the end of the fiscal year, a 20
percent cut in pay to my civilians. There are resources that
are used for missile warning and missile defense that we won't
be able to operate at full capability. There are things that we
use for space surveillance that we won't be able to operate at
full capability.
Mr. Swalwell. And General, do you think that makes us more
or less prepared to handle a near-Earth objects?
General Shelton. That is not what we do. That is NASA's
responsibility. We contribute serendipitously at times but we
are focused on things in Earth orbit.
Mr. Swalwell. So if you had to focus on something in Earth
orbit, would it make you more or less prepared having to have
these across-the-board cuts?
General Shelton. We are clearly less capable under
sequestration.
Mr. Swalwell. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back
the balance of my time.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Swalwell. The gentleman from
Florida, Mr. Posey, is recognized for his questions.
Mr. Posey. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank all
three of you for your very detailed written testimony. You use
a lot of facts that I frequently refer to that clearly indicate
it is not a matter of if but when civilization will be
threatened by an impact. Until the recent Russian impact, quite
a few people thought those of us who were even aware of this or
dared mention it were on the kooky side, and so one good thing
about that is maybe a little bit of a wake-up call to reality
for some people.
Dr. Holdren, your testimony referred to the first-ever
exercise, deflection exercise. I wonder if you could just share
a little bit with us about how that went.
Dr. Holdren. I am not--the first-ever deflection exercise
was a kinetic impact on an asteroid of medium size, which while
interesting from the standpoint of the deflection it generated
did not reflect the magnitude of the capability you would need
for a late-notice deflection of an asteroid of threatening
size. It was an interesting demonstration.
One of the things I would like to reinforce is that the
President's proposal to land U.S. astronauts on an asteroid by
2025 will in fact exercise a number of the capabilities that
would be necessary to have in our toolbox should an asteroid of
threatening size be detected on a collision course. I would
disagree with something Congresswoman Edwards said, that this
is a lackadaisical program. I think it is a crucial program,
and I think it is going to lead to major advances in
capabilities which are not just interesting to demonstrate at a
small scale but not enough to deal with a real threat.
Mr. Posey. Thank you. And I took her comment to mean she
thought the approach to it might have been lackadaisical, not
that it wasn't necessary, you know, for whatever----
Ms. Edwards. For the record, I didn't say that word.
Mr. Posey. Okay. Now, the Ranking Member asked about
protocol, you know, who is in charge, and we got about three or
four minutes of a chatter but we never got an answer about who
is in charge, and so rather than asking for a response, I would
just like to recommend that the next time that you all come
before us you give us a protocol and say this is who is in
charge here, here is in charge here and here is in charge here,
and it is just a very clear matter of protocol who is in charge
in various instances, you know, as being preordained and
preestablished.. I know you are going to corroborate and, you
know, get this stuff done if we have an impact, but a good
segment of the population thinks it is just a matter of calling
Bruce Willis in, you know, and notwithstanding we don't have a
shuttle anymore, you know, it is impossible. But things that
beg for an answer, you know, scary of course, that we only know
about 10 percent of the huge threats and we virtually have no
idea of the small threats like the one that went undetected,
the recent impact in Russia. You know, what would we do if you
detected even a small one like the one in Russia headed for New
York City in three weeks? What would we do? Bend over and what?
General Bolden. No, Congressman, I have to go back to what
I said before. These are very rare events. From the information
that we have on asteroids that we have discovered of all sizes,
we don't know of one that will threaten the population of the
United States in three weeks, and we are trying very diligently
as I said before with the President's budget to put ourselves
in a position where we advance the technologies so that three
weeks will not be something that causes us to panic because we
will be able to respond.
We are where we are today because you all told us to do
something, and between the Administration and the Congress, the
bottom line is always the funding did not come, and I don't
care whose fault it is or if it is anybody's fault. We all know
what we are facing today and we are all sitting here today as
the Congress and the Administration try to figure out
sequestration, something that never should have happened.
Nobody planned it to happen but we are facing it today. And so
the answer to you is, if it is coming in three weeks, pray, if
we find that out right now. And that is not bad policy.
Mr. Posey. That is reality.
General Bolden. I am a practicing Episcopalian and I love
what the Pope is doing right now. I will tell you, things have
happened. You have got to pray.
Mr. Posey. The upside, I guess, is that there is more
public awareness now of the importance of space to the survival
of our species and it is not at some unknown point in the far-
distant future that we can imagine.
General Bolden. And sir, if I may, you said something that
is so important. It would be very easy for this Congress and
for the Administration to say--because we get the question all
the time, why are we worried about exploring beyond low-Earth
orbit, can't we just put that off for 5 or 10 years. The reason
that I can't do anything in the next three weeks is because for
decades we have put it off for the next 5 or 10 years. We don't
have contractors who go away from doing their job and then 5
years from now we call and say okay, we want to build a rocket.
They will tell me, with whom; we don't do that anymore. All
those guys went over and they are now selling pizza, and I am
not being facetious when I say that. And I apologize. You cause
me to lose my temper sometimes when I--this is really
important.
Mr. Posey. Yes, it is.
General Bolden. And it has to be continuous. The President
has a plan but that plan is incremental, and we can not like
him, we can not agree with him, we can not do a lot of things.
It is the best plan we have, and if we want to save the planet,
because I think that is what we are talking about, then we have
to get together, that side and that side, and decide how we are
going to execute that plan as expeditiously as possible. That
is all I can tell you.
Mr. Posey. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Posey. The gentleman from
California, Mr. Takano.
Mr. Takano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This use of the term ``civilization threatening'' or
``civilization destroying'' asteroids, remind me at what size
would we say such an asteroid would be?
Dr. Holdren. A 1-kilometer asteroid would be carrying
energy in the range of tens of millions of megatons. That is as
much or more energy as was in the combined arsenals of the
United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold
War. An asteroid of that size, a kilometer or bigger, could
plausibly end civilization. Nobody has the detailed models, the
ability to calculate and detail, to tell you exactly what the
threshold is, but when you are talking about tens of millions
of megatons of explosive energy, you are putting civilization
at risk.
Mr. Takano. And I am hearing that we are relatively
optimistic that we can develop systems at the right price
points to be able to detect asteroids of this size with a
sufficient amount of lead time to be able to do something about
it.
Dr. Holdren. That is the size range where we have already
detected something in the range of 93, 94 percent of the
asteroids of that size range that could come close to the
Earth, and in that size range, we can be reasonably assured,
especially as we make these additional investments going
forward, of being able to detect them with quite a lot of
notice.
Mr. Takano. Let us scale it down to medium- to large-size
city-destroying asteroids. What size would those be?
Dr. Holdren. A city-destroying asteroid could be in the
range of 50-meter diameter carrying an energy in the range of 5
to 10 megatons.
Mr. Takano. What sort of systems would we need to be able
to detect that? You talked about more assets in our orbit,
telescopes of that kind including those that could get around
the issue of the sun.
Dr. Holdren. We would want the infrared telescope in an
orbit resembling that of Venus. It could be a Venus trailing
orbit following the planet around, the planet Venus, which
again is what the B612 Foundation is in fact working on. As
Administrator Bolden mentioned, we actually had an experiment
with an infrared telescope that was built for an orbiting
telescope built for a different purpose. It is very good at
finding asteroids.
Mr. Takano. We spoke a lot about the cooperative nature of
what would need to happen, nations coming together, but would
there be also rivalrous kinds of impulses which might divide
us? In fact if we were to detect objects of this size, would
nations also be concerned about that impacting the ability to
detect missiles, for example?
Dr. Holdren. I think these are very different capabilities.
As General Shelton mentioned, going into detail about our
missile-detecting capabilities would require a different forum,
but they are quite different in nature from the capabilities we
would need to detect and track asteroids.
Mr. Takano. Well, the chairman raised a question that I
thought was rather interesting, did none of our current
missile-detecting capabilities, did they fail to be able to
detect the most recent asteroid, and you may not be able to
answer that question.
General Shelton. I can. We did detect it, and as I said, it
was at the time. It wasn't predicted. It was detection at the
time.
Mr. Takano. So the missile detection capacities we have now
I mean really are kind of--they are more in real time as
opposed to time that we might be able to remediate the problem?
General Shelton. Yes, sir, and focused on two things. The
infrared signature coming out the back end of a missile, we see
that, and as soon as it either breaks the ground, if there is
weather overhead, as soon as it breaks the clouds, we will see
that. We will be able to tell you what type of missile it is.
We will be able to tell you where that missile is going. We
will be able to tell you where it is going to impact. So very
solid missile-warning capabilities. Those infrared sensors can
be used for other things but they can't be used for predictive
things out beyond Earth orbit.
Mr. Takano. Mr. Chairman, I am out of time. Thank you so
much.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Takano. The gentleman from
Arizona, Mr. Schweikert, is recognized.
Mr. Schweikert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just because I want to get my head around and try to really
understand some of the base-level approach here, and Doctor, I
was going to ask you first, and forgive me if I am equating a
statement to you that was in someone else's opening statement.
A dangerous interaction, Earth and an object, was the statement
one-out-of-a thousand-year event?
Dr. Holdren. The one-in-a thousand-year event is the one of
the magnitude that hit over the Tunguska, the asteroid impact
over Siberia in 1908, and that was a 15-megaton class event.
That is characteristic of one in a thousand years. The
dimension of that asteroid was somewhere in the range of 50
meters.
Mr. Schweikert. Now, if I remember my old modeling classes,
when you start getting into something with that far out in
detail, you know, it is like the person that says it is a 500-
year flood except we had three of them in the last 10 years,
because you have such--your degree of confidence, your noise in
that just becomes--it blows off the chart. So we always like to
say one in a thousand but it is one in a thousand with, you
know, a 20 percent lack of confidence. Does that sort of math
also work for this?
Dr. Holdren. Well, I would say certainly there is a lack of
confidence of that size or greater but the real catch is that a
one-in-a-thousand-year event can occur at any time. The fact
that on average one only expects these to happen once in a
thousand years doesn't mean that one won't happen next year.
Mr. Schweikert. Often when we talk to certain non-
statistical people, you try to explain that you can have the
three 500-year floods in 10 years and then go 1,500 years
without something.
Okay. In the discovery of objects out there, how much are
you finding is coming from the amateur astronomy community? I
mean, if I remember correctly, you were telling me that--was it
the gentleman--was it an amateur in Spain that saw the last
one?
Dr. Holdren. I am not sure it was an amateur.
General Bolden. I don't know that it was--we can find out
whether it was an amateur astronomer. We just know it was an
astronomer in Spain that made the discovery on 2012 DA14.
Mr. Schweikert. Is there--how formal or informal is that
network out there of university amateurs, governmental
astronomers, you know, scouring the skies, seeing things,
reporting them? How does that mechanism work?
Dr. Holdren. It is actually quite organized, quite formal
and quite fast. That community of folks stay in constant
communication.
Let me take this opportunity to recommend a book, because
it is not mine, a book by NASA's head of the near-Earth Object
Identification program, Dr. Donald Yeomans. It just came out
this year, 2013. It is called Near-Earth Objects: Finding Them
Before They Find Us. Nice title. And he talks at great length
about these networks, about the roles of amateurs, about the
roles of professionals, who discovered what.
Mr. Schweikert. You are beating me into where I was
actually trying to go. Is there a way to take that network and
incentivize it? I have a great interest in sort of distributive
information, distributive networks, so lots of smart people all
over the world with this their hobbies, and is there a way--
should we be incentivizing that?
Dr. Holdren. That is a great question, and we in OSTP are
greatly in favor of crowdsourcing. We are greatly in favor of
putting challenges out there, and in fact----
Mr. Schweikert. You and I are about to become really good
friends.
Dr. Holdren. And these challenges we already know. We have
used them across a domain of interesting problems, and I think
there is no doubt we are going to have a challenge around
asteroid detection.
Mr. Schweikert. And it is not answerable in 20-some
seconds, but part of that is, okay, we see something. How far
in advance with current technology do you have to see something
to analyze, determine, you know, threat assessment and then
react to it?
Dr. Holdren. The analysis and threat assessment is pretty
fast because once you see it, you can train on it various other
instruments--the radio telescopes, optical telescopes, and use
the combination of information available from them once they
know where to look in the sky to characterize its trajectory
and determine whether or not it is a threat. The long-time
scale, the long pole in the tent, is deploying the capability
to deflect one that you discover is on a collision course, and
that is the issue where currently we would have to say the time
scale is in the range of years, and I think Administrator
Bolden suggested that he would get back to the Committee on
that, but I think his estimate, his initial estimate, is
certainly reasonable. Even throwing a lot of resources at it,
you would be talking 4 or 5 years to mount a deflection
mission.
Mr. Schweikert. Mr. Chairman, thank you for your patience.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Schweikert. The gentlewoman
from Connecticut, Ms. Esty, is recognized.
Ms. Esty. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I too share some of the interest in this sort of
crowdsourcing, and would just flag, since we have already had
some hearings on big data, to perhaps follow up at a later time
to think about what opportunities there are in other areas. We
are also looking at the data side and how we might be able to
collaborate on this worldwide problem, and I think that is very
important.
For General Bolden, if you could talk a little bit about
what NASA's procedure is for actually notifying our Federal
agencies? You get notice of a NEO. What do you need to know?
What triggers a notification warning and how does that actually
work?
General Bolden. Congresswoman, there are several
organizations we notify. We notify the State Department, first
of all, because they notify our international partners that
there is an incident, and this is not just for asteroids. This
would be for a satellite that has fallen back to Earth or
something, and we have had to exercise that several times over
the last two years. The first person I would notify would be
Dr. Holdren as the President's science advisor, and going back
in response to Mr. Posey's question, there is no question in my
mind who is in charge, and I go to Dr. Holdren because he pulls
the team together, whether it is DOD or NASA and everyone else,
but I understand the thrust of the question. So we would notify
other Federal agencies, FEMA, the State Department, and then go
from there. And it is scenario dependent. It depends on what
the characterization of the asteroid or the NEO happens to be.
Sometimes it is just a matter of saying hey, we now have
something else that has been added to the inventory, it is not
an Earth-threatening orbit, and we do that.
Ms. Esty. Could you talk about whether there is an
organized international warning network, or should there be? Is
this something that is again scenario dependent or is there an
actual formal network?
General Bolden. Dr. Holdren mentioned the recent meeting in
conjunction with U.N. COPUOS that actually the chair was an
American, a NASA scientist, and from that meeting came the
initial decision that we would organize, and I can get you more
information on what they propose, because like everything else,
it is a proposal for an international collaborative effort to
do this.
Dr. Holdren. If I could just add one thing to that. The
Minor Planet Center, which I mentioned before, which is located
at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, is a
formal international entity to which everybody automatically
feeds discoveries of new near-Earth objects. So there is
already a formal network which functions to assemble all the
information that is available from all these different
telescopes around the world, and even the amateur astronomers
know where to go with their findings. They go straight to the
Minor Planet Center, and the Minor Planet Center then goes to
the NASA operation at JPL, which is responsible for working out
the trajectory in coordination with these other groups. But the
thing that is new, the international asteroid warning network,
which emerged from this February 15th meeting in Vienna, will
ramp up this whole effort and will add, I think, additional
layers of capability as countries come together to say given
these current scattered assets, what more do we need and how do
we get it.
Ms. Esty. It seems to me that is very important for several
reasons. Everybody is under budget constraints so that we
should be more effectively deploying world resources in this
range but also confidence building, which I worry about from a
security point of view, that if other countries see this as
threatening because we might use these technologies in some
other way, it is going to be vitally important that we are
sharing in a way that in fact respects the assets other
countries have and we all get the benefit for worldwide
resources. So if you have specific proposals as the outcome of
the Vienna conference goes forward, I hope you will come back
to us to help us bring those forward to leadership about new
opportunities but in fact will be lifesaving, you know, planet-
saving potentially but that will allow--will require greater
collaboration. Thank you very much.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Esty. The gentleman from
Texas, Mr. Weber, is recognized.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Holdren, you said that the asteroid that hit Siberia
was 15 megatons. What was the name of that event?
Dr. Holdren. That was Tunguska.
Mr. Weber. Tunguska?
Dr. Holdren. T-u-n-g-u-s-k-a.
Mr. Weber. Okay. And then you said, I think, you all agreed
there was 13,000 objects----
Dr. Holdren. Thirteen to 20,000 140 meters and above, so
the number would be somewhat larger for asteroids 100 meters
and above.
Mr. Weber. How close is the nearest one?
Dr. Holdren. Well, it is not a question of how close it is
now. The question is, how close will its orbit take it to the
Earth in the near future. Right now, as Administrator Bolden
has said, none of these asteroids hat we have found is on a
collision course with the Earth.
Mr. Weber. Okay. You also--well, I think it was you,
General Bolden, that said the Russian meteor was hidden by the
sun and it is the reason we didn't detect it because it came
straight out of the sun?
General Bolden. I wasn't, but that is correct. The folks in
NASA when I asked the question of how did this happen, it came
from out of the sun.
Mr. Weber. But my question is, when something comes right
out of the sun directly at us, at some point we are able to
identify it, General Shelton, you said. How much time do we
have? Is that 10 minutes, 2 hours? At what point does it become
identifiable as it gets to the Earth's atmosphere?
General Bolden. Well, one thing, Congressman, I do have to
reemphasize, we talk about these three week scenarios, that is
so unlikely, and even the occurrence in Russia, that was not a
city-threatening--if you were in Russia, that was a significant
event, but that is not of the size that is the city-
threatening, the region-threatening, the other----
Mr. Weber. But can you give me a time frame on how long we
would have when one actually is in the----
General Bolden. It is my belief that we can identify in
sufficient advance those that are the big threats, but we need
to do better.
Mr. Weber. Okay. We had the Hubble telescope up for a long
time. Now we have replaced that----
General Bolden. It is still up.
Mr. Weber. It is still up, and you and I had the discussion
in my office, we have a better telescope up.
General Bolden. We are a little ways away. In 2018 we will
launch the James Webb Space Telescope, but they are not in the
asteroid NEO identifying--they are looking at totally different
things.
Mr. Weber. Given the scenario of low funding and time being
of the essence, could we make that change to where we could add
on to that telescope so we get it up in space?
General Bolden. No, sir. Very simply, no, sir.
Mr. Weber. Can't do that?
General Bolden. No, sir. We would not want to do that, to
be quite honest. We have a plan right now, Dr. Holdren and I
both have mentioned collaboration with private industry, with
private organizations like B612. I don't want anybody to think
that B612 is going to save the planet but they are doing what
we need to do in terms of providing a means to identify----
Mr. Weber. That was my question about that particular
telescope. The ISS, if I remember correctly, orbits the Earth
every 91 minutes?
General Bolden. That is about right.
Mr. Weber. How much of a role do they play in being able to
identify and how much time do----
General Bolden. Right now we don't utilize it at all, but
as I talked about when I was in with you, we are learning every
single day that ISS, although we thought it was not a platform
that you would want to do Earth science, it is turning out to
be a great platform, and we are learning more and more about
it. We have a solar experiment that is going up, and there may
be the capability to put something there, but that is not going
to be the answer.
Mr. Weber. Six hours, six days, six weeks?
General Bolden. I would not even like to fool anybody that
ISS and anything we can put on it is going to answer this
question. The types of things that Dr. Holdren mentioned and I
mentioned earlier are the way we need to go.
Mr. Weber. All right. Two final questions and I have got to
go. Who monitors this screen for all of these objects? Does it
doing your iPhone when there is a threat coming? I mean,
somebody has to got to be watching some instrument 24/7 to say
oops, we picked one up. Who does that?
Dr. Holdren. That happens at the Minor Planet Center, where
all the information from all of these sensing instruments
around the world goes.
Mr. Weber. And then final question. So you explode an
asteroid, how do we know that we get total disintegration and
we don't have, instead of one big object coming at us, 20 very
lethal objects?
Dr. Holdren. You don't know that. That is one of the
reasons that blowing one up close to the Earth is not a great
option. Deflecting it farther from the Earth so that it doesn't
hit us at all is a much better option.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Tank you, Mr. Weber. The gentleman from
Texas, Mr. Veasey, is recognized.
Mr. Veasey. Thank you. I forgot who it was earlier talked
about an asteroid hitting an ocean and causing a tsunami. I
guess depending on the size of the asteroid would be the
correct answer to this question, but how far inland could a
reasonably sized asteroid make water come in? Because that was
really interesting to me.
Dr. Holdren. There is a very interesting discussion of
exactly that question in Dr. Yeomans' book, and the answer is,
we really don't know because the dynamics of tsunamis caused by
asteroid impacts are, number one, very complicated and not
adequately investigated, and it depends on many factors
including the slope of the ocean bottom close to the continent
that is going to be most affected and it depends on a lot of
other characteristics of the asteroid impact. So I think there
is no simple answer to that question that we can give at this
time.
Mr. Veasey. What about asteroids hitting other, you know,
planet systems, or what sort of research do you have on that?
Dr. Holdren. Well, there are a lot of craters out there.
There are craters on the moon from asteroid impacts that we can
see very clearly.
Mr. Veasey. Any recently that you--any recent craters on
the moon?
Dr. Holdren. I would have to get back to you on that. I am
not sure what the most recent impact on the moon is, but I
think none very recent, but again, in geologic time, ``recent''
can be quite a stretch of time. But there is also lots of
evidence of asteroids bashing into each other. If you look at
the larger asteroids that are out there, they themselves are
pitted with major craters that come from them bumping into each
other.
Mr. Veasey. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Veasey. The gentleman from
Utah, Mr. Stewart, is recognized.
Mr. Stewart. Thank you, gentlemen, for your time. I know
you and your careers and I have a great deal of respect for
you, so thank for that. General Bolden, good to see you, sir.
We spent some time at your place talking the other day, and I
know that you are a former Marine pilot. As you know, I am a
former Air Force pilot.
My question is actually for General Shelton. As a senior
Air Force officer with great wisdom and insight, is it your
understanding, sir, as it is mine that Air Force pilots are the
best pilots in the world?
General Shelton. I am going to have to say yes on that,
sir.
Mr. Stewart. Thank you, sir. I am surprised no one has
asked that question yet. I am glad I was able to.
General Shelton. Actually, sir----
General Bolden. That is fighter pilots of all services with
the Air Force. I am an attack pilot.
Mr. Stewart. You are a bigger man than I am because I have
never landed on a carrier.
Actually I have a couple of simple questions, then maybe a
more detailed one. The first would be, you know, we spent a lot
of time talking about detection avoidance, you know, and some
of the uncertainties about that. I am curious about policy,
public policy. If we were to determine that there was a threat
and then even determined that it was actually potentially
devastating, do we have a policy as to whether we would share
that information with the public and how we would do that? And
Dr. Holdren, I guess that is probably most appropriate for you.
Dr. Holdren. My expectation would be that we would notify,
but the first thing that would happen if information came in
indicating that an asteroid had been detected to be on a
collision course with the Earth and it was big enough to do
serious damage, it would be exactly what happened after the
Fukushima earthquake and tsunami affected Japan. Namely, there
would be a gathering in the Situation Room within minutes in
which we would have the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
we would have the Secretary of State, we would have the head of
FEMA, we would have the Secretary of Homeland Security, we
would have the head of NASA, we would have General Shelton, and
there would be an intense discussion of the whole range of
actions that the government would take in order to deal with
the threat, whatever it was, and in that meeting,
unquestionably there would be a discussion of who to notify,
how fast, in what form.
Mr. Stewart. And I understand that. I am curious, and
maybe--and I am not advocating one way or the other. I am just
curious, have you determined the protocol for advising the
public? Is that part of that matrix?
Dr. Holdren. I don't know whether FEMA, which would have
that responsibility, has developed a formal protocol. We could
get back to you on that.
Mr. Stewart. Okay. I wish you would. I would be curious to
know that.
And the second thing, and we have all talked about it,
maybe I am just not that bright, I am not sure I get it, but,
you know, the saying, we don't know what we don't know, and you
said that we have discovered 94 percent of the asteroids over 1
kilometer, for example, but if we don't know what is out there,
how do we know that we have discovered 94 percent of them?
Dr. Holdren. That is actually a very good question, and it
turns out that there are subtle statistical techniques that
rely on sampling of subpopulations and what fraction of them
you have see before in order to determine what fraction of the
overall population you have actually seen. That is actually
described again in wonderfully clear detail in Dr. Yeomans'
book. It was the best explanation of that that I have seen.
Mr. Stewart. So you are interpolating there? You are
drawing conclusions but you are fairly comfortable----
Dr. Holdren. You are drawing conclusions based on sampling.
Mr. Stewart. Right, but you are fairly comfortable with
those figures?
Dr. Holdren. Yes.
Mr. Stewart. Okay. And then the last question in the minute
or so I have left, you know, we talk about detection being, you
know, the first line of defense, and our efforts, and you
mentioned some of the others as well, but I mean, is the United
States the lead on this? Clearly, we are, but are other nations
contributing to this detection effort in a meaningful way or is
it almost entirely our efforts that are meaningful here?
Dr. Holdren. No, absolutely other nations are contributing
in a meaningful way. There are important telescopes and data
centers in Italy. That is a German-Italian collaboration. There
is another one in Czechoslovakia. There are some--the LSST will
be in Chile. There are some in Australia. And again, this
domain is actually remarkable for the degree of international
cooperation and interconnection compared to many others where
we are not nearly as far along.
Mr. Stewart. As it should be, of course, because we all got
a dog in this fight. So those other entities, are they funded
by the EU and other--they are not with American funding at all?
Those are entirely independently funded efforts?
Dr. Holdren. No, they are not entirely independently
funded. For example, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is
being very substantially funded by NSF even though it is going
to be in Chile, but of course, it will be an NSF facility in a
sense. The Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico is funded by
NSF.
Mr. Stewart. So even though these are located,
geographically located around the world, they are primarily
U.S. efforts?
Dr. Holdren. I would have to get back to you on the
international distribution of the funding. Certainly there is
substantial funding from the European Space Agency. There is
substantial funding from Germany, from Italy, from
Czechoslovakia, from France, but I could not give you a
percentage.
Mr. Stewart. Again, if you would, I would appreciate that.
Thank you. And Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Stewart. The gentleman from
Florida, Mr. Grayson, is recognized.
Mr. Grayson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, we could spend each year a million dollars on
space threats, we could spend a billion dollars or we could
spend a trillion dollars. I would like to hear from each one of
you what we should spend. That is what we have to decide here.
And specifically, I would like to hear either a number or
formula, I think the Science Committee can deal with formulas,
or some sort of list of the things that you think must be done
without regard to what they cost. Let us start with you, Dr.
Holdren.
Dr. Holdren. The National Academy of Sciences just a couple
of years ago came out with a report in which they actually
addressed this question, and they looked at what you could do
for $500 million a year, what you could do for $100 million a
year, what you could do for 50. I would say on the basis of
that, if we are just looking primarily at detection and
characterization, that I think we would want to be spending
upwards of $100 million a year. If we are looking, as I think
we must as well, at mitigation, then you would have to include
the costs of carrying out the President's goal of visiting an
asteroid by 2025. Various estimates have been put forward of
the cost of doing that, but it almost certainly would be in the
range of $2 billion or more spread over the period between now
and 2025.
Mr. Grayson. Thank you. General Shelton?
General Shelton. Yes, sir. In my case, we are talking about
geosynchronous orbit into the surface of the planet, so that,
just that part of space that we are responsible for, probably
200 or 300 million a year-ish is what we are talking about,
developing better sensors that are more sensitive to the space
debris population that is growing, sensors that allow us to
better catalog the activity that is there and characterize it
as threats continue to grow in space both adversarial threats
as well as environmental threats. We need to be able to
characterize that much better than we have the capability to do
today. So I would say that 200 to 300 million range is what we
are talking about.
Mr. Grayson. Good. Administrator Bolden?
General Bolden. Sir, the only thing I will add, because Dr.
Holdren pretty much answered it, I want to reemphasize, because
we have identified 95 percent of those objects that are a
kilometer and above and we have seen none that are on a
collision trajectory with Earth, this is not an issue that we
should worry about in the near term. However, as I said, the
President has laid out a plan, and I would say that is a very
good start. We have a lot of work to do but the funding that is
presently laid out in the President's budget is sufficient to
get us there incrementally. We just have to move that plan
forward. So you can't stop. That is my point.
Mr. Grayson. All right. Now, tell us what kind of costs we
would be facing if we spent nothing. It can be a worst-case
scenario or a not-so-bad-case scenario, but the likely costs we
would face if we did nothing. Let us start with you, Dr.
Holdren.
Dr. Holdren. This is a very tough question because there
are different ways to present these things. If you take the
expected value of the damage in terms of loss of human life
integrated over a very long period of time, it comes out that
the estimated loss of life from asteroid impact is only about
100 per year. That compares with a million per year for
malaria, it compares with five million per year for tobacco. So
it doesn't look like a very big threat. But of course, that is
not really a meaningful way to present a risk of this character
where you are talking about a low probability of a very big
disaster, and in those sorts of situations, we tend to invest
in insurance to reduce the likelihood of a disaster we would
regard as intolerable. If you say how big is the disaster, if
you are talking about a 10-kilometer asteroid of the sort that
exterminated the dinosaurs, what is the value of all of
civilization? It is a very big number but is it meaningful as a
number which you then divide by the 65-million-year return
time? I think we just can't get at it that way.
Mr. Grayson. General Shelton, the costs of a worst-case
scenario?
General Shelton. Well, again, from a DOD perspective, we
would not be able to characterize the traffic on orbit, we
would not be able to avoid collisions on orbit, we would not be
able to detect adversary activity on orbit, and our dependence
on space, by the way, not only for our way of life but also for
military operations is very high so we would sacrifice that.
Mr. Grayson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Grayson, and let me thank
our witnesses today for their testimony. This has been a
particularly interesting hearing. No doubt there will be some
follow-up questions that will be addressed to you all, but
thank you for being here and thank you for your expertise as
well.
We stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:58 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
----------
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by The Honorable John P. Holdren
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Responses by Gen. William L. Shelton
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Responses by The Honorable Charles F. Bolden, Jr.
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Appendix II
----------
Additional Material for the Record
Submitted statement by Representative Steve Stockman, Committee on
Science, Space and Technology
Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for focusing Congress' attention
on taking effective action on the threats, and solutions to,
potentially dangerous meteors and asteroids.
The Chelyabinsk meteor, the flyby of asteroid 2012 DA14, and the
1908 Siberian Tunguska event all offer the dramatic lesson that
tracking and mitigating such objects must become a national priority.
We know a large meteor or asteroid could destroy a city and kill
millions of people. Unlike in 1908, we now have the ability--and
therefore the responsibility--to take effective actions for identifying
and avoiding a potentially catastrophic collision.
Under current funding levels, NASA will not be able to meet the
Congressional requirement to identify 90% of all objects 140 meters in
diameter or larger by 2020. Altering the trajectory of an object in the
Earth's path could not be accomplished within decades at current
funding levels.
Therefore these objectives must be met with additional and
sufficient funds rather than reducing or cancelling funding for
existing NASA programs. `Robbing Peter to pay Paul' would only result
in half-hearted efforts which would fail to address the threat from
asteroids while at the same time crippling our existing space program.
A poorly-funded program will yield poor results.
I am a tireless budget-slasher; however, science, space; and yes,
planetary defense are among the few government programs essential to
our future.
Advances in technology for planetary defense may provide spinoffs
for propulsion to take Americans to Mars and beyond; for cleaning up
space debris which threatens satellites and the International Space
Station; as well as for more everyday-life applications.
This is of course a worldwide threat, and other nations should
participate in developing solutions. However as with all smart space
partnerships, it is in our distinct national interest that the United
States lead the effort. This will assure that the majority of the
technology developed will directly benefit the U.S. economy, and will
give the U.S. the ability to block the transfer of our most advanced
technology to our potential adversaries. The same technology to track
and alter the course of asteroids could have military applications.
The threat from asteroids and meteors is real. America must take
the lead to develop practical and effective solutions, reap the
technological benefits--lest a decade or two from now we regret our
inaction.
Letter submitted by Dr. Dante Lauretta, Department of Planetary
Sciences, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
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Additional responses submitted by The Honorable Charles F. Bolden, Jr.
Material requested for the record by Rep. Rohrabacher during the
March 19, 2013, NEO hearing.
To prepare for the unlikely event where the Earth would be
threatened by a collision with a near-Earth object (NEO), we believe an
enhanced program would include a steady effort of ground-based
observation and monitoring of the detected hazards as they are found
(lifecycle cost estimate of up to $600M over 20 years). Further
enhancements could include space-based surveys to provide more timely
detection of the hazardous population, and technology demonstration
missions to test deflection techniques. The costs of these further
enhancements are difficult to precisely estimate, but might be on the
order of $2.5 - $3B.
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THREATS FROM SPACE:
A REVIEW OF PRIVATE SECTOR EFFORTS
TO TRACK AND MITIGATE ASTEROIDS
AND METEORS, PART II
----------
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, 2013
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in Room
2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
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Chairman Smith. The Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology will come to order.
Welcome to today's hearing, which is titled ``Threats from
Space, Part II: A Review of Private Sector Efforts to Track and
Mitigate Asteroids and Meteors.'' I will recognize myself for
an opening statement and then the Ranking Member.
A few weeks ago, our Committee held a hearing to review
U.S. Government efforts to track incoming asteroids and
meteors. Today, we will follow up by focusing on
nongovernmental efforts.
The substantial public interest in this issue indicates the
broad fascination with the subject. As witnesses said in our
previous hearing, the events of February 15, when an asteroid
passed close by the Earth and a meteor struck Russia, were
unique in their occurring on the same day. And I am going to
hold up a piece of the asteroid that exploded above Russia on
February 15. Maybe I ought to take it out of the bag here. Let
me--and I am assuming this is not toxic. Is that right? But
there it is, a nice size bit of meteorite there, a gift from
the Russians. It was given to us by the Principal Investigator
of NASA's Asteroid Sample Return Mission, which is slated to
launch in 2016.
In our first hearing, testimony about the government's
efforts was not reassuring. Most troubling to me was the fact
that of the up to 20,000 asteroids that could be labeled as
city destroyers, we have identified only 10 percent. And we are
unlikely to have the means to detect 90 percent until 2030.
Detecting asteroids should not be the primary mission of
NASA. No doubt the private sector will play an important role
as well. We must better recognize what the private sector can
do to aid our efforts to protect the world.
Today's hearing will help us understand the level of risk,
as well as what capabilities we have and those we will need.
The President's FY 2014 budget proposal brings necessary
attention to this issue in general, but a consensus will have
to be reached within Congress before progress can actually be
made.
This won't be an effort for one agency, one company, or one
country. And in these fiscally challenging times, we can't
afford duplication or the inefficient use of our resources. The
more we discuss and understand the challenges we face, the
easier it will be to facilitate possible solutions.
Now, I will recognize the Ranking Member, the gentlewoman
from Texas, Ms. Johnson, for her comments.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
Prepared Statement of Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, House Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology
Good afternoon. A few weeks ago, our Committee held a hearing
to review U.S. Government efforts to track incoming asteroids
and meteors. Today, we will follow up by focusing on
nongovernmental efforts.
The substantial public interest in this issue indicates the broad
fascination with this subject. As witnesses said in our previous
hearing, the events of February 15, when an asteroid passed close by
the Earth and a meteor struck Russia, were unique in their occurring on
the same day.
This is a piece of the asteroid that exploded above Russia on
Feburary 15th. It was given to me by the Principal Investigator of
NASA's asteroid sample return mission, which is slated to launch in
2016.
In our first hearing, testimony about the government's efforts was
not reassuring. Most troubling to me was the fact that of the up to
20,000 asteroids that could be labeled as ``city destroyers,'' we have
identified only 10%. And we are unlikely to have the means to detect
90% until 2030.
Detecting asteroids should not be the primary mission of NASA. No
doubt, the private sector will play an important role as well. We must
better recognize what the private sector can do to aid our efforts to
protect the world.
Today's hearing will help us understand the level of risk, as well
as what capabilities we have and those we will need. The President's FY
14 budget proposal brings necessary attention to this issue in general,
but a consensus will have to be reached within Congress before progress
can be made.
This won't be an effort of one agency, one company, or one country.
And in these fiscally challenging times, we can't afford duplication or
the inefficient use of our resources. The more we discuss and
understand the challenges we face, the easier it will be to facilitate
possible solutions.
Ms. Johnson. Good afternoon. I want to join the Chairman in
welcoming our witnesses to today's hearing. You each have deep
experience and expertise directly related to the hearing topic,
and I look forward to your testimony.
As the Chairman has indicated, this hearing is the second
that the Committee has held in the opening months of the 113th
Congress on the topic of asteroids.
Last month's meteor over Russia and the close passage of a
near-Earth asteroid both stimulated public interest in the
potential threat posed by asteroids and comets. And this second
hearing is certainly a reflection of that interest.
I will not attempt to repeat the sentiments I expressed at
our first hearing on this topic and instead will confine myself
to a few brief comments.
First, it is clear that from last month's hearing there is
still a lot of work to be done to track and characterize
asteroids that could potentially impact the Earth and that even
relatively small asteroids could do significant damage if they
hit in a heavily populated area. So I hope that our witnesses
today will help us better understand what will be needed to
complete the existing survey, as well as perhaps extend it to a
smaller size asteroid.
Second, I want to be one to better understand both the
strengths and limits of NASA relying on private organizations
such as the B612 for detection of potential Earth-impacting
asteroids. My problem is not with the efforts of such
organizations to address what they see as an important problem.
Instead, my concern is that we have reached a point where our
government has to hope that nongovernmental organizations will
somehow do what the government should be doing but it
apparently is unwilling to pay for it. However, if the
protection of the planet is not an appropriate role for the
Federal Government, I am not sure what is. And finally, before
I close, I will note that the President's just-released budget
request proposes to invest in a number of asteroid-related
initiatives. We will need to closely examine the President's
proposals in the coming weeks to fully understand what is being
proposed. So I am not going to comment on them in any depth
today. Instead, I will simply say that I deeply hope that
whatever new initiatives are being proposed will be
accomplished accompanied by adequate funding of their own
rather than being funded by cannibalizing other important NASA
programs. Robbing Peter to pay Paul will not give us
sustainable and effective NASA programs. And I hope we will all
resist the temptation to do so as we try to address the
challenges posed by near-Earth asteroids.Thank you and I yield
back.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson
Good afternoon. I want to join the Chairman in welcoming our
witnesses to today's hearing. You each have deep experience and
expertise directly related to the hearing topic, and I look forward to
your testimony.
As the Chairman has indicated, this hearing is the second that the
Committee has held in the opening months of the 113th Congress on the
topic of asteroids. Last month's meteor over Russia and the close
passage of a near-Earth asteroid have both stimulated public interest
in the potential threat posed by asteroids and comets, and this second
hearing is certainly a reflection of that interest.
I will not attempt to repeat the sentiments I expressed at our
first hearing on this topic and instead wil confine myself to a few
brief comments. First, it is clear from last month's hearing that there
is still a lot of work to be done to track and characterize asteroids
that could potentially impact the Earth. And that even relatively small
asteroids could do significant damage if they hit a heavily populated
area. So I hope that our witnesses today will help us better understand
what will be needed to complete the existing survey as well as perhaps
extend it to smaller-sized asteroids.
Second, I want to better understand both the strengths and limits
of NASA relying on private organizations such as B612 for detection of
potential Earth-impacting asteroids. My problem is not with the efforts
of such organizations to address what they see as an important problem.
Instead, my concern is that we have reached a point where our
government has to hope that nongovernmental organization will somehow
do what the government should be doing but is apparently unwilling to
pay for. However, if the protection of the planet is not an appropriate
role for the Federal Government, I'm not sure what is.
Finally, before I close, I will note that the President's just-
released budget request proposes to invest in a number of asteroid-
related initiatives. We will need to closely examine the President's
proposals in the coming weeks to fully understand what is being
proposed, so I'm not going to comment on them in any depth today.
Instead, I will simply say that I deeply hope that whatever new
initiatives are being proposed will be accompanied by adequate funding
of their own rather than be funded by cannibalizing other important
NASA programs. Robbing Peter to pay Paul will not give us sustainable
and effective NASA programs, and I hope we will all resist the
temptation to do so as we try to address the challenge posed by near-
Earth asteroids.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. Other Members'
statements will be made a part of the record. And I will
introduce our witnesses now.
Our first witness is Dr. Ed Lu. Dr. Lu is the CEO of the
B612 Foundation, which aims to build, launch, and operate the
Sentinel Space Telescope to help find and track threatening
asteroids. He is a former NASA astronaut who flew three space
missions and spent six months aboard the International Space
Station. From 2007 to 2010, he led the Advanced Projects Group
at Google. His teams developed imaging technology for Google
Earth Maps, Google Street View, and energy information
products, including Google Power Meter. He is also the co-
inventor of the gravity tractor, a spacecraft able to
controllably alter the orbit of an asteroid. And he has
published scientific articles on high-energy astrophysics,
solar physics, plasma physics, cosmology, and statistical
physics. He holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering
from Cornell and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Stanford
University.
Our second witness is Dr. Donald Yeomans. Dr. Yeomans is a
Senior Research Scientist, Supervisor for the Solar System
Dynamics Group, and Manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program
Office at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
His research focuses on the physical and dynamical modeling of
comets and asteroids. He was a Radio Science Team Chief for the
Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission. He has received 15 NASA
Achievement Awards and asteroid 2956 was named 2956 Yeomans in
honor of his professional achievements. Dr. Yeomans received
his Bachelor of Arts degree from Middlebury College and his
Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Maryland.
Our final witness is Dr. Michael A'Hearn. Dr. A'Hearn is a
Professor in the Astronomy Department at the University of
Maryland. He is the Principal Investigator for the Deep Impact
Mission and NASA's Discovery Impact Mission in NASA's Discovery
Program and for the Small Bodies Node of NASA's Planetary Data
System. His research emphasizes the study of comets and
asteroids. Dr. A'Hearn received a Bachelor of Science degree in
physics from Boston College and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the
University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Now, we welcome you all. Thank you for being here. And Dr.
Lu, we will begin with you.
STATEMENT OF DR. ED LU,
CHAIRMAN AND CEO, B612 FOUNDATION
Dr. Lu. Thank you, Members of the Committee, and thank you,
Chairman Smith, especially for your leadership on this issue.
So my name is Ed Lu, and I am CEO of the B612 Foundation. I
want to thank you for the opportunity to testify before the
Committee to describe the B612 Foundation and its Sentinel
Space Telescope project and the importance of that project.
The B612 Foundation is a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit
that is building, launching, and operating the Sentinel Space
Telescope, which will find and track threatening asteroids. So
NASA, at the direction of Congress, has found and tracked 95
percent of the large asteroids, those larger than a kilometer,
that would likely end civilization were they to hit. So they
have done a great job on that. And none of these civilization-
enders is known--thus far discovered--is known to be on an
impact course anytime in this upcoming century. So that is the
good news.
But NASA has not even come close to finding and tracking
the one million smaller asteroids that might only just wipe out
a city or perhaps collapse a rural economy if they hit in the
wrong place. I would like to clarify something, and so I
thought this image might be of help. I just show here a
football stadium, which I understand now is Heinz Field in
Pittsburgh, and we show a couple of asteroids there, but just
for scale.
A 140-meter asteroid is not shown here, but it would
roughly fit inside that stadium. And that is the size--when
they hit, that would release about 100 megatons of energy,
which is roughly five times all the munitions used in World War
II. Okay. So that is much larger than a city killer. That is a
regional killer. Okay. And NASA discovered and observed,
tracked less than 10 percent of the asteroids in that size
range, sort of the stadium-sized ones.
A 40-meter asteroid, which is the larger of these two, is
what you would really call a city killer. The last one to hit
was in 1908 in Tunguska, and that had an impact energy about
three to five megatons of energy. It destroyed about 1,000
square miles of Siberian forest. And we have observed and
tracked well less than one percent of the million or so
asteroids of that size. So if you ask how many city killers out
there have we found and have tracked? Less than one percent is
the answer. And there is about a 30 percent chance that there
will be another impact of a city killer sometime this century,
somewhere on the surface of the Earth. Just for reference, the
smaller one shown there is about the size of the one that
struck Chelyabinsk last month.
So we simply don't know when the next catastrophic asteroid
impact is going to be, because we simply haven't yet tracked
the great majority of asteroids. Again, less than one percent
of these city killers have been tracked. Yet we have the
technology to deflect asteroids, and Dr. A'Hearn will probably
talk a little bit about Deep Impact. It is--you--which is an
experiment to actually hit an asteroid with a small spacecraft,
and that is all you really need to do in most cases if you find
the asteroids well in advance and--because you can't deflect an
asteroid that you haven't yet tracked. Our technology is
useless against something we haven't found.
So that is why our number one priority from the standpoint
of planetary defense is to find and track asteroids as soon as
practical. You can't deflect an asteroid you haven't yet found,
or for that matter, you can't capture it, you can't visit it,
you can't mine it, you can't explore it until you have found
it.
So finding and tracking the roughly one million or so city
killer asteroids in a reasonable time frame requires a system
that can find tens to hundreds of thousands of them per year,
right? If you are going to get to a million, you need to find
them at a very high rate. Anything less than that, from a
planetary defense standpoint, is just playing around the edges.
So this task of finding those smaller asteroids cannot be
done even by large ground-based telescopes, optical telescopes,
and it especially cannot be done by small telescopes. So--and
that is because asteroids are not only small but they are dark.
Their color is often as dark as charcoal, and that makes them
really dim. So these smaller asteroids are only spotted
currently when they come very, very close to the Earth. So,
because most of the large asteroids have been found,
unfortunately, that means that amateur astronomers and people
with smaller telescopes can no longer substantially contribute
to this particular effort, nor will small space-based optical
telescopes such as have been proposed by some commercial
companies, they will not make a dent in this problem.
But the fact that asteroids are dark can be used to our
advantage, because when they are small and dark, they absorb
light from the sun and they are warmed. And that means they are
brighter than the background sky if you observe them in
infrared. And when you observe them in infrared, you can see
them at much greater distances than you can with optical
telescopes.
So as described in the National Academies report
``Defending Planet Earth,'' if you want to find a substantial
fraction of city killer asteroids, you need a space-based
infrared telescope. So that is what the B612 Foundation is
doing. Our Sentinel Space Telescope is going to launch in 2018.
It will orbit the sun about 30 million miles closer to the sun
than the Earth in a solar orbit that is similar to the orbit of
Venus, and that means Sentinel will not have a blind spot
because--like Earth-based telescopes, which can only look at
night looking away from the sun. Sentinel will always look away
from the sun, looking outwards at Earth's orbit.
So it will find and track as many asteroids as have been
discovered by all other telescopes combined just in the first
month of operation. Over six and a half years it will find over
half a million asteroids, including more than 90 percent of the
sort of stadium-sized ones, the regional killers, and the
majority of those that are just city killers, the larger of
these two asteroids. These asteroids will be tracked accurately
enough to know if any of them is going to be on a course to hit
Earth this century.
So to carry out this mission, the B612 Foundation has
assembled perhaps the finest technical team I have had the
privilege of working with in my nearly two decades of
involvement in aerospace, including 12 years as a NASA
astronaut. The fact that we were able to recruit such a team
is, I think, a testament to the inspiring and urgent nature of
this mission. As we tell these people, who wouldn't want to
have a chance to save the world? And that is really what I
think drew them to the mission.
So our major partner in transmitting our data back, as well
as allowing some NASA experts to sit on some of our technical
review panels, including, for instance, Dr. Yeomans here. The
data generated by Sentinel will not only protect the people of
planet Earth but will form the basis of future exploration and
scientific missions.
So a unique aspect of B612 is that we are carrying out this
mission as a nonprofit. We do not receive any government
financial support, and we are relying upon donations from
individuals and foundations. These donors understand the
importance of cataloging the environment we inhabit and the
solar system, and they as individuals are making Sentinel
happen because they know that our future may depend upon it.
So make no mistake, raising this amount of money
philanthropically with no expectation of financial return from
our donors is challenging. But being a nonprofit has forced us
to be very focused, and I believe it has made us resourceful.
Our progress has been swift and we are approaching now the
second of our eight milestones leading up to launch.
The B612 Foundation is managing this project in an
innovative Silicon Valley fashion with the rigor of a NASA
project. So we are able to carry out this mission at what we
believe to be about 60 percent of the cost as if it had been
procured via federal procurement.
So I should point out that the core technologies that
Sentinel uses that allow us to detect dark objects via their
infrared admissions would be useful to a number of federal
agencies, including NASA, and there may be an opportunity to
expand our existing public-private partnership with NASA in a
manner that leverages our private donations, accelerates our
technical progress and, in the end, provides the data that
could protect us all.
So we can protect the Earth from asteroid impacts, but we
can't do it if we don't know where those asteroids are. And
that is why the Sentinel telescope is so important.
Chairman Smith. Okay, Dr.----
Dr. Lu. I can't think of a more inspiring mission. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Lu follows:]
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Chairman Smith. You are at nine minutes and we need to move
on. Are you--can you conclude?
Dr. Lu. That was my conclusion.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Good timing.
Dr. Yeomans.
STATEMENT OF DR. DONALD K. YEOMANS, MANAGER,
NEAR-EARTH OBJECTS PROGRAM OFFICE,
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
Dr. Yeomans. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee,
thank you for the opportunity to discuss some issues related to
near-Earth objects, and thank you all for your continuing
interest in this topic.
As noted by the Chairman, back on February 15, Friday, we
had a 40 meter-sized object that passed within 17,200 miles of
the Earth's surface and passed 5,000 miles within the
geosynchronous ring of communication satellites that were
announcing its arrival. Sixteen hours earlier on the same day,
we had an impact over Chelyabinsk, Russia, of an 18 meter-sized
object coming in at 42,000 miles per hour weighing 11,000 tons.
And although I have been upstaged by Chairman Smith, I also
have a piece of the rock that you may want to look at after the
hearing.
My point is that the close approach was a 1-in-40 year
event for an object of this size getting that close. The impact
of the smaller object over Chelyabinsk is a 1-in-100 year
event, so very unlikely events do happen sometimes on the same
day within 16 hours. Asteroid impacts with the Earth are
extremely unlikely, but they could cause global problems. But
if we discover them early enough, we have the technology to
deflect them.
Significant progress has been made to discover and
understand the physical characteristics of near-Earth
asteroids, largely as a result of NASA-supported efforts. For
example, as pointed out, over 90 percent of those near-Earth
asteroids larger than a kilometer have been found, and we have
integrated their motions for 100 years into the future, and
none of them represent a threat. About 25 percent of 140 meter-
sized objects have already been found, and likewise, they do
not represent a threat.
So the goal is to find and track 90 percent of the 140 and
larger sized objects, and in so doing, we will reduce the
threat of all objects of all sizes to a 99 percent level.
A thousand new near-Earth asteroids are discovered each
year, almost all of them as a result of NASA-supported surveys.
Twenty-seven thousand new asteroid observations per day are
added to the archives at the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and there is an increasing pace with which
observations of near-Earth asteroid physical characteristics
are being taken, including optical measurements, near infrared
measurements, and radar measurements.
The vast majority of near-Earth asteroid discoveries are
currently being made by the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson,
Arizona, the Pan-STARRS Survey in Hawaii, and the Linear
Program near Socorro, New Mexico. And these surveys are
continuously improving their discovery efficiencies, and the
next generation of near-Earth asteroid survey telescopes and
cameras are under development.
However, as pointed out by Ed, still undiscovered are 50 to
100 of the largest near-Earth asteroids and several thousand
near-Earth asteroids larger than 140 meters. In fact, there was
a two-kilometer--a new two-kilometer-sized asteroid that was
announced today, so we still have a handful of large ones to
find and several thousand of the smaller ones that are 140
meters and larger.
A dramatic increase in the near-Earth asteroid discovery
efficiencies is achievable using space-based infrared
telescopes, either in a Venus-like orbit, as pointed out by Ed,
or located about a million miles on the sunward side of the
Earth at the so-called L1 point. The goal is to find the large
near-Earth asteroids early enough to mount a deflection mission
if necessary. The easiest and fastest deflection technique
involves impacting a spacecraft on the asteroid with a
rendezvous spacecraft there to monitor the success and verify
that the object was moved just enough so that in 10 or 20
years, when it was predicted to hit the Earth, it would miss by
a wide margin.
What about the undiscovered millions of small near-Earth
asteroids larger than 30 meters that are most likely to hit the
Earth, the city killers, as Ed pointed out? Finding most of
these near-Earth asteroids would be extremely challenging.
Perhaps a cost-benefit study could establish the appropriate
threat levels where it would make more sense to simply warn of
an asteroid impact rather than finding it early enough to mount
a deflection campaign.
NASA is currently supporting a program called ATLAS at the
University of Hawaii that is designed to find small objects a
few days or a few weeks prior to impact. And the objective
there, of course, is civil defense. If you find it several days
in advance, you could evacuate if the object was threatening a
populated area.
So, in summary, with the current near-Earth asteroid threat
identification process in place, and with considerable
augmentations to NASA's Near-Earth Object Observation Program,
we can determine which near-Earth objects represent potential
future threats and do so with enough time to either deflect the
larger objects or warn of the arrival of the smaller ones.
Thank you for your attention.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Yeomans follows:]
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Chairman Smith. Thank you, Dr. Yeomans. I was also going to
mention the book you wrote that just came out this year called
``Near-Earth Objects: Finding Them Before They Find Us.'' That
is a nice subtitle. But I appreciate your writing about this
subject, and who knows, maybe anticipating the publicity that
subject would have this year as well. Thank you for your
testimony.
Dr. A'Hearn.
STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL F. A'HEARN, VICE CHAIR,
COMMITTEE TO REVIEW NEAR-EARTH OBJECT SURVEYS
AND HAZARD MITIGATION STRATEGIES,
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
Dr. A'Hearn. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, thank
you for the invitation to appear today and to discuss a variety
of aspects of the near-Earth object hazard. I will talk a
little bit less about finding them than Don and Ed had done and
more about what to do about it.
Once we complete the George E. Brown survey down to 140
meters, we have taken care of a large fraction of the risk
where we can get long advanced warning, and therefore, have
plenty of time to mount a mitigation campaign. As was just
pointed out regarding the ATLAS survey, that is designed for
late discoveries, and as we go to really small ones, late
discoveries will be a different kind of issue, because then we
don't have time to do mitigation other than an evacuation for
30- to 50-meter city killer--and that is really more than a
city. Tunguska was 2,000 square kilometers. You can, in
principle, do evacuation, but if you get much larger than that,
75 meters, 100 meters, evacuation is no longer practical, and
you need to have a plan in place with tested technologies to
try to do mitigation on relatively short notice, because these
are likely to be shorter notice than the ones we have been
discovering so far where we have been aiming for years of
advanced warning and plenty of time to plan how to mitigate.
The mitigation is a key part of the hazard issue, and when
the National Research Council issued its report, it suggested
programs at a variety of different levels depending on how much
insurance you wanted to buy basically. And if you really want
to include mitigation as part of that, it is up at the couple
of hundred million dollars a year level in order to include
mitigation.
Now, it is interesting that most of what we--much of what
we know about mitigation so far has come from research
programs. They are the ones that provide the physical
characteristics. Earth-based remote sensing tells us about the
sizes of the different asteroids, tells us about their surface
composition, but not necessarily their interior. For a few of
them, such as binaries, we can get interior bulk densities. But
missions to these objects--we just heard a mention earlier from
the Chairman of the sample return mission that will be launched
in 2016. That mission will tell us a great deal about the
structure of an asteroid--the internal structure and what the
materials are, and therefore, what kind of techniques will work
efficiently for mitigation.
The Deep Impact Mission, of which I was a principal
investigator in 2005, carried out an impact on the nucleus of
comet Tempel 1. It showed first that cometary nuclei are
remarkably porous. That makes them harder to push around than,
say, a solid iron asteroid. And the rocky asteroids, which are
fragmented, are somewhere in between. It demonstrated new
techniques for autonomous navigation to lead to an impact.
Whether you are doing a kinetic impact or a standoff nuclear
explosion, it demonstrated how difficult the attitude control
is when you get close to some of these. Milligram pieces of
dirt or rock were bouncing our third-of-a-ton spacecraft around
by many degrees, causing serious pointing problems. That is an
important thing you need to do if you are developing
mitigation.
So these research programs are important because they are
the only ones that are now providing us information on physical
characteristics. Unfortunately, the Discovery Program has been
devastated. It was originally conceived as at least one new
mission every two years. In the 1990s there were six missions.
In the 2000s there were five, the last of which was in 2007.
Then, there was a five-year gap until the one that was selected
in 2012, namely InSight, the mission to Mars. And with NASA's
current plans, the announcement of opportunity for the next one
won't be until 2015, which means selection to fly in 2017. So
we are down to two per decade instead of the five a decade the
decadal survey recommended and which was the basis for the
original program. Frequent opportunities to go to space are
critical.
Also, just as it is important to partner with the private
sector, it is crucial to also partner internationally for
mitigation because mitigation can be seen as threatening. And
we need to develop real mechanisms. We have talked a lot with
potential international partners. We need to be talking to
people who aren't our partners such as the Chinese, people who
might think something we did in space was a threat rather than
trying to help, and that needs to be something that we need to
look very carefully at in the near future.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. A'Hearn follows:]
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Chairman Smith. Thank you, Dr. A'Hearn. I will recognize
myself for questions.
Dr. Lu, given the fact that we do have budget constraints
and that funding is limited, what is the most--single most
important thing we could do in this, say, next three- to five-
year time period to detect these threatening asteroids?
Dr. Lu. Well, if you are going to ask what is going to find
the most number of these asteroids that--of anything that is
currently planned, I think it is Sentinel pretty--by a pretty
good margin. And if you were to ask, you know, to get to what
Congressman Johnson mentioned, which is, you know, we are a
private organization----
Dr. Lu [continuing]. There are opportunities to accelerate
our development. You know, we could, in principle, deepen our
relationship with our currently existing public-private
partnership if we wanted to accelerate that. We understand
again that the technology that we are developing--the core
technologies are useful for lots of other things that the
Federal Government finds important, and so, you know, one of
the possibilities is to accelerate the technology development.
Another possibility is if this data is worthwhile to NASA,
if it is important to NASA, perhaps we could work out something
where this data is purchased from us, and that way NASA only
pays for it if the data is good and they could work with us to
make sure that the--as they already are, that the quality of
the data is what they need.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Lu.
Dr. Yeomans, I am sure there is an answer to this that I
should know, but we have always been told that in the case of
near-Earth objects, the only alternative is to move them out of
their orbit or deflect their trajectory so that there is no
direct impact, and it doesn't do any good to explode those
objects because then we just get a shower of near-Earth
objects, many more but they are smaller. Is it--would it be
possible to explode an incoming asteroid with such force that
the pieces would be so small that they would burn up coming
into the Earth's atmosphere? So is that a realistic alternative
or not?
Dr. Yeomans. Yes, it is actually. There has been some work
done by Dave Dearborn at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories using
computer simulations. If you insert an explosive charge and
detonate it, you often get the fragments going off at such
velocities and directions that what little does hit the Earth
does so with very little damage.
Chairman Smith. Why is so much, therefore--so much time, so
much effort, so much focus on moving it out of its current
trajectory? Why not more focus on what you just described?
Dr. Yeomans. Well, it is actually considerably easier to
run into it and slow it down a tiny little bit than to land on
it and plant an explosive device and----
Chairman Smith. Okay. Another practical answer as well.
Dr. Yeomans. It is technologically easier.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Dr. A'Hearn, you mentioned about the
time with--that would--we would have or not have if we detected
an incoming object and had to deflect it. What would be the
average time that we would have, say, of a city killer-sized
asteroid? I guess it depends on whether you are using ground-
based telescopes or space-based telescopes, but say in the next
three to five years, how much time would we have if we
developed the Sentinel program and were able to detect these
objects?
Dr. A'Hearn. I will defer questions on the sensitivity of
Sentinel to Ed Lu----
Dr. A'Hearn [continuing]. But in general, it is important
to remember we have only ever detected one incoming object
before it hit.
Chairman Smith. We have a long way to go----
Dr. A'Hearn. That was less than a day out.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Dr. Lu----
Dr. A'Hearn. And that was very small.
Chairman Smith. Do you have any ideas on how much----
Dr. Lu. The goal for Sentinel is to find things decades
before they hit so that you can deflect them rather than
evacuate.
Chairman Smith. We have plenty of time. At our first
hearing, Dr. Holdren made the point, I think, that only two
percent of the Earth's surface consists of urban areas and so
that further diminishes the possibility of a city sustaining a
direct hit. I am not sure that is much consolation to those who
live in rural areas by the way, but at least it was interesting
as far as the amount of damage that might occur.
But thank you all. You have answered my questions.
And the gentlewoman from Texas, the Ranking Member Ms.
Johnson, is recognized for hers.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much.
Dr. Lu, I realize that details over NASA's proposal in its
FY 2014 budget request to conduct a mission to an asteroid with
humans and other asteroid-related activities are just trickling
out. A story over the weekend reported concerns about the
asteroid initiative from two sources. One worried that NASA's
activities may interfere with the private-sector efforts.
Another was critical of the absence of international
collaboration. Based on what you have read or know of NASA's
plans, are such concerns warranted?
Dr. Lu. I don't think so. I believe that--you know, I, as
much as anybody, want our human spaceflight program to have a
clear, defined, and inspiring goal. However, I don't think--
this mission should not be confused of one that is planetary
defense. That is a very--it is a different mission----
Ms. Johnson. Um-hum.
Dr. Lu [continuing]. What that proposed mission is to do.
Ms. Johnson. Dr. Yeomans, can you share details on NASA's
asteroid detection effort or efforts that are scheduled to
benefit from the increase for the coming fiscal year?
Dr. Yeomans. Yes, it is my understanding that the asteroid
retrieval mission is primarily a technology test of the solar
electric propulsion system. It is also a rendezvous with a
small asteroid with an attempt to bring it back into a lunar
orbit. It has components for NASA's human exploration program.
And, of course, the most challenging first part of this whole
mission idea is to find a suitable target. So the plus-up that
you mentioned in the budget will certainly provide a
commensurate increase in the number of objects that are
discovered and could be utilized for space resources,
scientific investigations, planetary defense, as well as a
target for this mission.
Ms. Johnson. Dr. A'Hearn, did you have any comment?
Dr. A'Hearn. No, I have no further comments.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you. Now, in the first round of hearings
that we had, there was mention of an orbiting telescope, which
we don't have access to. Could either of you comment on the
value of having an orbiting telescope?
Dr. Lu. Well, the Sentinel is an orbiting telescope----
Ms. Johnson. It is.
Dr. Lu [continuing]. But it does not orbit the Earth. It
orbits the sun. But it is a space telescope.
Dr. Yeomans. There is also----
Ms. Johnson. Yes.
Dr. Yeomans. There is also a concept where you have a
spacecraft a million miles sunward of the Earth also orbiting
the sun, but it is closer to Earth and could be looking out
toward near-Earth asteroids as well.
Ms. Johnson. So in view of the seemingly increased interest
for activity of the asteroids, how do you see an investment in
an orbiting telescope that would orbit the sun or in a place it
is not orbiting now? Do you see any value?
Dr. Yeomans. Oh, yes. Yes, as Ed mentioned, the benefit of
having a telescope in space is several-fold. First of all, you
can use an infrared detection system, and these objects are
much brighter in the infrared and much easier to find than in
the optical region. You don't have problems with weather or day
and night. You can observe these objects from a viewpoint that
the Earth cannot, so you sometimes get an advanced warning in
that respect. So it is a far more efficient system from space.
Ms. Johnson. Any other comment?
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Hall, the Chairman Emeritus
is recognized for his questions.
Mr. Hall. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
I probably ought to just write a book on this, my
questions, because I have so many. And this is your second
hearing, is that right?
Mr. Hall [continuing]. And I admire you for it. You are
almost seeking something that is impossible from the numbers
even than that I have heard here.
Olin ``Tiger'' Teague, whose picture is right over there,
ought to be known as the father of NASA. And you might even
become the father of characterizing Earth objects and how close
they are. But I think you are going to have to have some
overseas hearings. We have had this second one and four more
just like this probably won't yield any definite answers. But
it is a very interesting matter, a very interesting item.
But how could we ask--and maybe, Dr. Yeomans, on to the
near objects program, like in the 2013 worldwide attention in
the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia--injured a lot of people but
didn't kill anyone is what I understand. And the others that I
remember and that we have heard about, a lot of injuries, but
what--they didn't know it was coming and didn't know what we--
when we had that hearing--and I think I testified to this
before--we found out in that hearing that one had passed Earth
and just missed us by 15 minutes. And that could be a jillion
miles away, but that is where they put it. It had missed Earth
by 15 minutes, and nobody even knew it was coming until it had
come and gone.
So--and we made every effort to get in touch with nations
like Japan, Spain, Italy, England, France to send somebody over
here to testify with us because it has to be a world for us if
we are going to really do anything about it. We can't pave the
way like we spent 34 billion on global warming. My President
spent 34 million on that and haven't done anything on it.
But it looks like we are going to have to have world input
to ever be anywhere near efficient on making the determination
that all the people in the world that I want. But we couldn't
get any interest at all. And I think this Chairman of this
Committee that that would be a very good thing if you could
have some hearings, maybe in England, be at the places and get
their interest up because it is going to take their working
with us to make anything happen.
I guess the only question I would have is, Dr. Yeomans,
whether you know of any private organizations that are involved
in near-Earth object detection like Boeing or Lockheed or
McDonnell Douglas or Texas Instruments? You know, I would like
to get them into it but they can't do it themselves. So that is
just something to think about. Do you have any suggestions on
the private organizations and how they might work into it?
Dr. Yeomans. Well, Ed----
Mr. Hall. They said at one time a laser could affect them
just a little bit but it didn't say how much.
Dr. Yeomans. That is true. If you had a laser nearby, you
could ablate the front side and introduce a thrust in the
opposite direction. But in terms of the international
cooperation, I couldn't agree more. In fact, the European Space
Agency has been getting more and more interest in this near-
Earth asteroid discussion. Recently, they are actually funding
the so-called NEOShield program to look at various mitigation
options, including kinetic impactors.
There is an activity within U.N., COPUOS, the Committee on
the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, and NASA is involved with
that working group to try and define an international warning
system, with the response protocols that would be required in
the event of an incoming object. Who would be in charge? Who--
--
Mr. Hall. Dr. Lu suggested NASA. The reason I thought about
``Tiger'' Teague, Olin Teague, and all the work he did in even
getting it off the ground and supporting it with funds that we
don't have today. And we can't go to Mars until people can go
to the grocery store, so I don't know how we are going to talk
about protecting the world if we don't have world support. And
it would be a great thing for this Chairman if the government
doesn't have the money to send them, he has personal wealth if
he could maybe take four or five of us over there. And I think
he is going to tell me my time is over. I yield back what time
I do have.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Hall.
The gentlewoman from Connecticut, Ms. Esty, is recognized
for her questions.
Ms. Esty. Thank you very much. I wanted to follow up a
little bit on--we have had discussion previously about this
international issue which, Doctor, you had mentioned. Can you
explain to us what is currently done in terms of data sharing?
And perhaps, Dr. Lu, if you could discuss if you have even
contemplated now for your project, it not being a governmental
project, being private nonprofit, what you would contemplate
being that data-sharing aspect for your organization?
Dr. Lu. Yeah, I--you know, our intention as a public
nonprofit is to put the data out there so as many scientists
can see the data and use the data and warn people if there is
things in the data that show that something is going to hit the
Earth. So that is our plan.
But actually, if I could add one other thing. Don't get the
impression that finding asteroids--while it is a lot of money--
is something that requires enormous amounts of money. For
instance, I mean our telescope, which will find and track a
great majority of these asteroids, is less than the cost of--
there is a road-widening project in the San Francisco Bay area
in the town of Burlingame that is more expensive than our
telescope. And that is why we went about this as a private
fundraising effort. We are less expensive than a museum. There
is a wing of an art museum in San Francisco that cost more than
our project. And that is privately raised money. It is not
enormous. I mean, it is a lot for individuals, but it can be
done.
Ms. Esty. If I can follow up, actually. That was very
helpful, because I did want to ask a little bit more. What are
the specifics? What are your plans if you--obviously, we know
that in the past NASA has encountered cost overruns for a
variety of reasons. What are your plans as an organization if
you discover, say, in the development or in the research phase
that something you anticipated will work does not quite work
the way you expect it? Would you go back to funders? What does
that do? How--and also, frankly, how close are you to raising
the $450 million that you have budgeted? When will you start?
Will you do it in tranches if you don't have it ready? What are
your plans for ensuring that? Because we are hearing from
everyone if you don't have the money set at the outset, you end
up embedding cost overruns because it just takes longer.
Dr. Lu. We are using existing technology to the extent we
can, and we actually have a firm fixed price contract, which
is--so in other words, the risk is borne by our contractor Ball
Aerospace. And yes, we are raising the money in tranches. This
year, our goal--fundraising goal is $20 million. And we are
well on our way towards that for this year.
Ms. Esty. So how much of the total do you have--would that
have you at?
Dr. Lu. Well, this really is our first full year since we
have begun our fundraising. We announced on June 28 of last
year. Our needs were quite small last year, in the single-digit
millions. This year, they are accelerating, and next year they
will accelerate even more, so our peak spending rate will be in
the range of $100 million for a year or so, and then it will
taper back down. But we can finance this over a much longer
period.
Ms. Esty. And just a question for all of you somewhat. If
we have congressional mandates that, say, previously would have
been directed to NASA as a governmental organization and
Congress says we need to see this data because we need to make
decisions, for the doctors who are not in the private entity,
how would you contemplate we should--would structure that? And
how would that operate?
Dr. Yeomans. Well, I think it is important to point out
that NASA does have a Space Act Agreement with the Sentinel
group for providing navigation and tracking of their
spacecraft. Once their data are taken, it would come through
the NASA channels. It will go to the Minor Planet Center in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, then it would come to our program
office at JPL, and then we would interact with our Italian
colleagues and we would post our results for the world. So it
is quite a transparent data-sharing process even though it is
privately funded, for the most part.
Dr. A'Hearn. Yes, I was just going to comment that in my
experience the data on finding and tracking near-Earth objects
and on predicting the orbits of them all becomes very public
very quickly. There has never been a problem getting the data.
The only problems are what to do with it.
Ms. Esty. Thank you all very much.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Esty.
The gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, is
recognized for his questions.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. I will try to be as
fast as I can here.
First of all, I would like to note----
Chairman Smith. And Mr. Rohrabacher, if you will suspend
for a minute, I want to let the Members know that after this
series of questions, we are going to recess for about 45
minutes so we can go conduct three votes, and then we will
resume the markup after the votes.
And the gentleman continues to be recognized.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And number
one, first of all, Mr. Chairman, I would like to agree with
Chairman Hall and his recommendation that we work with you and
Members of both sides of the aisle to try to find international
cooperation on an effort that deserves to be not just the
responsibility of the American taxpayers but people of the
Earth united against this common threat.
Let me note there are other groups like the Planetary
Society, headed up by Bill Nye, who are very involved with this
issue. And I have a statement that I would like--of Mr. Nye
that I would like to put in the record at this point.
Chairman Smith. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information may be found in Appendix II.]
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much.
Next, I would mention there are two recently formed
companies that have as their goal mining asteroids: the
Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries. Both of these
companies have impressive teams, and I would hope that at some
future date we might be able to bring them to testify about
their activities and the expertise that they are developing.
Dr. Lu, I found your testimony to be very interesting. We
have to assume that either road construction in San Francisco
is incredibly expensive or that we have in some way brought
down the cost of your efforts--space efforts. I find--and it
was your testimony that B612 does not in any way receive any
taxpayer funding?
Dr. Lu. That is correct.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Congratulations, Dr. Lu. I want to say
that for the record, congratulations. And I understand that the
Sentinel mission under the Foundation actually has been
operating with fixed-term prices that you are dealing with
your--with the companies that you have to deal business with.
Is that correct?
Dr. Lu. That is correct.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So you have a fixed-price term. We have
been told over--again and again, Mr. Chairman, that we can't
have these fixed-price contracts. For example, with our polar
weather satellites, oh, you can't have a fixed-price contract.
Perhaps this private sector group here that doesn't receive any
of our government money is showing us how we can keep some of
the costs down.
And let me just suggest that we need to get more private
money, more international cooperation. This is a serious threat
to the--not only to the well-being but even, perhaps, to the
survival of humankind on this planet, and it deserves us to
work together and to do so in a cost-effective way. And we
can't do anything nowadays unless it is in a cost-effective
way.
I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing, and I just will leave it at that. And I appreciate
your efforts and am totally supportive.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher. And I
know this subject has been of long-time interest to you as
well.
As I say, we are going to recess for about 45 minutes, and
then I hope Members who still have questions will return. And
if you all can possibly stay, that would be great. I understand
one witness may have to leave, and if that is the case, we
understand that as well. So thank you all, and we will return
and we will recess until about 45 minutes from now.
[Recess.]
Mr. Palazzo. [Presiding] I want to thank the witnesses for
staying behind for this important Committee hearing.
And at this time, I am going to recognize Ms. Bonamici for
five minutes.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you so much for your testimony and thank you for
staying. Sorry we had to leave to vote.
I wanted to talk a little bit about how we respond. And Dr.
A'Hearn, in your prepared statement, you indicate the
Academies' 2010 report provided options geared to how much
money Congress wished to appropriate to buy insurance against
an impact, and you described evacuation for small impactors is
one approach to mitigation and noted the panel's recommendation
that a research program be instituted to better understand
mitigation approaches.
I represent a district in Oregon that contains coastline,
and my constituents on the coast are frequently talking about
being prepared, emergency preparedness for tsunamis and
earthquakes, and so these are certainly analogous situations.
In our prior hearing, there was a discussion about
evacuations in response to a meteor incident. So what would be
the nature of the recommended research as it applies to
evacuations? I know that when we are talking over in the Oregon
coast now they don't have a lot of time from the time they find
out about a tsunami to get upland. So what do you see as the
most cost-effective insurance, and can you talk a little bit
about preparing for a meteor impact, please?
Dr. A'Hearn. I think the most important issue is that we
don't have a really solid theory of how big a tsunami you will
get from a given size impact. There are simulations that
disagree by huge factors on how big a tsunami you will get at
various places. So on that specific issue, I think that is the
key thing that needs to be done. It depends on the size of the
impact or, of course, depends on the velocity it comes in, the
speed, and it depends on the density. You know, is it really
solid or is it mostly porous? But for any given case even,
there are disagreements in the theoretical literature on what
the effect will be.
So that is the biggest issue. Once you know how big the
tsunami will be, then you will get a better feeling for how far
you have to evacuate to get to high ground. And I am not
familiar with how much time is needed in any specific area.
Ms. Bonamici. Sure. That is dependent, I think, on the
geography.
And to all the panel members, how should the policy--how
should we approach the policy and legal issues in addressing
warning the public? My constituents at home are worried about
finding a job and about too many kids in the classroom, so--and
on the coast, they are worried about a tsunami and they went
through, you know, after the earthquake in Japan, some
emergency preparedness, but there is still a lot to do. So what
is the best way for us as policymakers to approach this warning
and preparedness, and how should we handle that on national and
international levels? What is your advice?
Dr. Yeomans. If I could respond. There is an ongoing effort
within the United Nations' Committee on the Peaceful Uses of
Outer Space to address these issues, and one of the key issues,
as you noted, is how do we best warn the public, give them the
facts without scaring them? So on the international level
within this Committee, these discussions are ongoing. And that
is one of the issues that is front and center. We don't have a
process in place. I mean, we are scientists so we can say we
are going to impact probably at such and such a time, but that
is not necessarily the most effective communication with the
public. So we have to bring in folks who are more experienced
in communicating risks, not just scientists. I would suggest
that perhaps once these discussions are completed in,
hopefully, another year, then effective communications would
come out of that.
Ms. Bonamici. Dr. Lu, do you have any input on----
Dr. Lu. Yeah, my opinion is that we should not find out
what the impact of a large asteroid is in the ocean and--
because we have the technology to prevent that.
Ms. Bonamici. Um-hum.
Dr. Lu. And we should go out there and find these
asteroids, find out if any of them are going to hit us, and the
deflect it. And I think we can do that.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. And my time is about to expire.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Palazzo. I now recognize Mr. Posey for five minutes.
Mr. Posey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Somebody mentioned
climate change study a little while ago. You know, asteroids
took care of that at one time, and if it happens again, we will
not have global warming. They can fix that forever.
Out of curiosity for the three of you, the Administration
is excited about privatizing space to the greatest extent
possible. What do you think would be an appropriate number for
an X prize type of arrangement for identifying and destroying
an asteroid, just off the top of your head, all three of you,
starting with Dr. Lu?
Dr. Lu. Well, if you ask the question--I mean what would it
take to find these asteroids first for the first part of the X
prize. It is really a two-step process.
Mr. Posey. Right.
Dr. Lu. I would lay a number out that would be equivalent
to whatever--you know, some fraction of what NASA would have
spent if they did it themselves. And that number is probably in
the range, according to the NRC report, $800 million to a
billion. So pick some fraction of that. That is why we think we
can do it for $450 million, and that is what our contract
specifies. But if you put the prize somewhere around there,
then NASA is guaranteed to save money if it succeeds.
Mr. Posey. Yeah, and if it doesn't, the money is never
spent.
Dr. Lu. Exactly.
Mr. Posey. Okay. How about--that is to find one. Does that
include destroying it?
Dr. Lu. No, but I think if you--once you find them,
remember that you will now know if there is something that is
going to hit that is a definite threat in the next century. And
now you have got time to do it right. And also I think money is
also no object if something is really barreling down on the
Earth and you know the time, date, and place that thing is
going to hit. I think we can come together and solve that
issue.
Mr. Posey. Okay. Thank you. Dr. Yeomans?
Dr. Yeomans. I would add that NASA already has 15 years of
experience in this area of identifying objects. They have three
programs underway, ground-based optical detection. I would
suggest perhaps a study that could be undertaken to see whether
we could leverage those assets to improve what is already there
by bringing online new technology and new telescopes along with
studies to flesh out what is the most effective way of
deflecting an object that is found on an Earth-threatening
trajectory.
My comment would be, we should leverage existing activities
and facilities.
Mr. Posey. Okay. Well, it is my understanding the Small
Bodies Assessment Group at Lunar Planetary Institute was
chartered for the specific purpose of evaluating those types of
missions and the priorities of the scientific community for
near-Earth objects. How has NASA collaborated or leveraged its
information with this group in planning of the Asteroid Capture
Mission?
Dr. Yeomans. I am not intimately involved with the
connection between the Small Bodies Assessment Group and this
mission that you mentioned. So I am not aware of what has and
what has not been communicated between those two.
Mr. Posey. Okay. Are either of the others familiar with it,
Dr. A'Hearn?
Dr. A'Hearn. I know essentially nothing more about this
mission than I have read in the newspapers and in Administrator
Bolden's release this morning. I am not aware that the Small
Bodies Assessment Group has been given any information on it.
They may have been, but I am not aware of it, so I am not going
to comment further.
Mr. Posey. That was my feeling and that is why the
question. Dr. Lu.
Dr. Lu. I also am not aware of the connection between the
two.
Mr. Posey. Okay. You know, all of your written testimony
mentioned obviously the asteroid mitigation, and I know we have
to identify them before we can divert them or destroy them. We
all knew that. But, you know, assuming that the development of
a strategy and technology would take a considerable time, you
know, obviously perhaps years, what steps do you think we
should be taking in the meantime in case our search uncovers a
threat, which we all know is not a matter of if but when?
Dr. Lu. I think it would be prudent to do a deflection
demonstration mission, pick an asteroid that you know is not
anywhere near hitting the Earth and show that you can deflect
it in a controlled manner so that it doesn't break up into
pieces where you don't know where they are going and so on. I
think that can be done.
Mr. Posey. Okay.
Dr. A'Hearn. I would agree that a demonstration deflection
mission is an appropriate thing to do, and a deflection mission
is ideally suited for the international collaboration that I
think is needed in this area, because typically you need to
send two spacecraft, one of which does the deflection and the
other of which monitors the effectiveness of it. Depending on
whether you are doing a gravity tractor or kinetic impactor
or--we presumably would not do a nuclear one as a test and the
ability to have international collaboration on coordinating two
spacecraft is important to get the various countries trusting
that we are not trying to divert something to land somewhere
else.
Mr. Posey. Interesting. I hadn't thought about that but I
think you are correct. Dr. Yeomans, Mr. Chairman, can he
finish?
Dr. Yeomans. Can I add something? There is an interesting
concept pertinent to your point whereby NASA would use the
excess launch capability for the InSight spacecraft to Mars,
have a co-launch of an impactor much like the Deep Impact
mission, and that would go and collide with the asteroid that
the Osiris Rex mission has already picked for their target. So
the Osiris Rex mission is already resident, and you would have
this impactor coming in, and you can measure the deflection. So
it is a nice leveraging of an existing launch and an existing
rendezvous spacecraft. So that would be one instructing
deflection demonstration.
Mr. Posey. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Palazzo. You are welcome. I now recognize Mr. Stewart
for five minutes.
Mr. Stewart. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thanks for
being here. It gives me faith in our future knowing that there
are people a lot smarter than me who are working on some of
these things.
I am not going to ask in real detail. I would like to just
kind of encapsulate what I think we have said but bring some
clarity to it before with some very quick questions. But before
we do, can I just divert for just a second with this, and that
is, you know, the old formula E = MC2, and you have talked a
lot about the mass of these meteorites, potential, you know,
objects, but is velocity a consideration, too? In other words,
are some of the smaller ones, are they traveling at such a
speed that they would have an equally devastating outcome or
are most of these objects kind of traveling at about the same
speed out there?
Dr. Lu. Most of them are--well, they are orbiting the sun,
so the typical velocities that they hit is really independent
of the size of the asteroid, and that is between 15 and, say,
25 kilometers per second.
Mr. Stewart. Okay.
Dr. Lu. So 40,000 miles an hour or so.
Mr. Stewart. So that is--I mean that is a fairly good
range. Fifteen to 25 is, what, 40 percent or something like
that? But their velocity doesn't really matter. It really is
just the size and the weight of the object?
Dr. Lu. Well, it is a combination of the destructive power,
it is a combination of the speed and the mass. But from the
standpoint of deflection, it doesn't much matter.
Mr. Stewart. Okay. Yes, sir, Dr. A'Hearn.
Dr. A'Hearn. I was going to just add to that. Indeed, 15 to
25 kilometers per second is the right ballpark for the
asteroids. It is one of the things you have to keep in mind,
however, if you deal with the cometary impact hazard. Those
come in at more like 30 to 70 kilometers per second. Now, they
are very infrequent compared to the asteroids, but one of a
given size will be much more damaging because of that high
speed of entry compared to the asteroid.
Mr. Stewart. Yeah, okay. And I appreciated your visual that
you showed us at the beginning. It kind of gives us a sense of
the scope there.
I know there was a recent comet that was discovered in
January that was looking like it was going to have a near miss
with Mars, and it would have been a devastating event for--had
that, you know, impacted the Earth, a dinosaur killing type
event. And as I recall, it was two years is what the, you know,
estimated impact time would be. Of course, we know it is going
to miss it now. If that had been directed toward Earth in two
years, is there realistically anything we could have done?
Dr. Lu. It would be very difficult.
Mr. Stewart. Probably not, is that true?
Dr. Lu. Yeah.
Mr. Stewart. So can you give me an idea? I know you are
speculating, but I mean what--how much time do we need? Do we
need 10 years. Do we need 20? Do we need eight? I mean, how
long do we need before we could actually do something even if
we detected an object that was going to impact the Earth?
Dr. Lu. I think with 10 years you can do this in a
controlled manner with backups and so on. Certainly, with 20
years you could do that. It gets much more difficult the closer
in it is, and that is, again, the importance of getting early
warning, because the closer it is to you, the more you need to
deflect it by to get it to miss.
Mr. Stewart. Yeah
Dr. Lu. So it gets much, much harder the earlier--the less
warning you have.
Mr. Stewart. Let's put that aside, that consideration of
the energy to deflect it. In two years from now, could we--are
we technologically capable of launching something that could
intercept it? Dr. A'Hearn, you seem to be shaking your head
``no.''
Dr. A'Hearn. No. If we had spacecraft plans on the books
already, that would take a year--I mean a typical small mission
like a Discovery class mission takes four years from approval
to start to launch. Okay. Now, a really accelerated military
program would be faster than that but that is a couple of years
still.
Mr. Stewart. Yeah.
Dr. A'Hearn. And you would have to have something ready to
launch, basically, if you wanted to do it on very short notice.
Ten years, 20 years, then you have got time to plan it. Five
years or less, it is really hard unless you have thought the
problem through and design things, maybe have components built,
maybe have a full system but----
Mr. Stewart. Because what we need, we have nothing like
this right now. We are not taking an existing weapons system or
existing vehicle and modifying it. We are really starting from
scratch to do this, true?
Dr. A'Hearn. Well, you would try to use it from existing
components. I mean you could--you would--if you were going to
do a kinetic impact, you might scale up what was done for Deep
Impact to larger launch vehicle, larger impactor, and things
like that. So it is not quite starting from scratch, but it is
starting from a pretty low point.
Mr. Stewart. Yeah. Okay. And then last question--well, I
tell you what, I am out of time. I would love to talk with you
further, but I appreciate you--again you being here. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Palazzo. I want to thank the witnesses for their
valuable testimony and the Members for their questions. The
Members of the Committee may have additional questions for you,
and we will ask you to respond to those in writing. The record
will remain open for two weeks for additional comments and
written questions from Members.
The witnesses are excused, and this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:13 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Dr. Ed Lu
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Responses by Dr. Donald K. Yeomans
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Responses by Dr. Michael F. A'Hearn
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Appendix II
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Additional Material for the Record
Submitted statement by Representative Steve Stockman, Committee on
Science, Space and Technology
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to address the
Subcommittee on this most important topic.
Our Nation--indeed, our world--faces threats in the future from
asteroids too small to be detected by our present means but large
enough to do unspeakable damage to our population centers. Witness the
recent event in Russia, which has raised worldwide awareness of the
potential threat. Clearly, it is important for us to increase the
sophistication of our space sensors so we can detect them in advance.
But once we spot them, we must ask: what can we do to protect the
people?
This Committee is to be commended for its recognition of this
important issue, and I appreciate this opportunity to address a unique
technology that could provide us with a potential arrow for our quiver
of planetary defense. That unique capability is being developed by a
small, high-technology American company named Ad Astra Rocket, located
in Webster, Texas next to NASA's Johnson Space Flight Center.
The company is perfecting the ``VASIMR'' plasma rocket engine, a
game-changing electric propulsion system which originated at NASA under
the leadership of its inventor, Dr. Franklin Chang Diaz, a former NASA
astronaut. Incidentally, more than four years ago, during his U.S.
Senate confirmation hearing testimony, NASA Administrator Charles
Bolden described the 25-year efforts of Dr. Chang Diaz and his small
team at NASA who kept this technology alive on only ``a small stipend''
from NASA.
Since it spun off from NASA in 2005, Ad Astra has continued VASIMR
development--at a much faster pace and exclusively with private funds
that brought the technology to a high state of maturity. At a power
level of 200 kilowatts, their prototype is one of the most powerful
plasma rockets operating in the world. It has been fired reliably more
than 10,000 times in their vacuum chamber.
I know this is not the only advanced rocket being studied today.
Other technologies, such as hall thrusters and ion engines, are being
developed by NASA. However, while NASA remains an American space
technology powerhouse, the world has changed since the opening of the
space age in the 1950s and 60s, and U.S. innovation in rocket
technology is no longer confined to NASA. It exists as well in small
entrepreneurial start-ups such as Ad Astra and others that help
maintain our nation's technological edge razor sharp. The government
must keep pace with this changing paradigm and resist becoming a de-
facto competitor with the private sector. It must ensure that fair and
open competition is promoted and supported at all levels. Judging from
its recent performance results, the VASIMR technology certainly
deserves the opportunity to show what it can do.
Now one of those potential missions--and the major focus of our
hearing today--is rocket technology to help us avoid a near Earth
asteroid collision by deflecting it away from the Earth. In response to
this, Ad Astra recently undertook a study on how this might be
accomplished. Their concept involves a solar powered robotic craft,
propelled by Ad Astra's high power VASIMR rockets that, upon arriving
at the asteroid, uses the plasma exhaust of one of its two engines (the
other is used to keep the craft in place) to gently push the object for
days or weeks, depending on the asteroid's trajectory. A recent
numerical simulation successfully demonstrated the deflection of a
40,000 ton asteroid similar to the one that barely missed Earth last
February and larger than the one that actually hit Russia. In their
study, the team also assumed--as it actually happened--only one year
advance warning to execute the mission. This was just an initial
concept evaluation. The team is now further developing the full range
of their mission capability. The rocket used is the 200kW VASIMR VF-
200, the same model being tested in the laboratory today, and the same
model the company wishes to test on the ISS in 2016.
The technology has multiple applications which go far beyond
asteroid deflection, and include more economical space station re-
boost, satellite deployment, retrieval and mitigation of orbital
debris. This propulsion technology also enables larger payloads and
much faster robotic and ultimately human missions to Mars and other
points in deep space.
The Company's next step is to test the engine on the International
Space Station in early 2016--a test which will validate the technology
for commercial use. Ad Astra has signed an agreement with NASA to move
forward on this test. As a National Laboratory, the U.S. portion of the
ISS offers a unique test environment for this technology, and beyond
accomplishing this important demonstration, Ad Astra's proposed
electric power and propulsion test facility would actually enhance the
ISS research infrastructure by providing an unprecedented power storage
capability that would enable other high power experiments of great
importance to developing a robust human space exploration framework.
Ad Astra continues to commit its resources to achieving this
critical milestone. In my opinion, this is a valuable technology for
NASA to invest in, both for the planned 2016 validation test on ISS, as
well as for asteroid deflection and space debris cleanup. With such
investments, the VASIMR team is prepared to step forward and undertake
a number of game-changing near-term missions for NASA and the
commercial space sector. These will help maintain U.S. innovation and
leadership in the new frontier of commercial space and ultimately help
pave the way for a robust and economically sustainable exploration of
the solar system.
At a recent hearing before this Committee on asteroids, a number of
experts were concerned that there were no good answers or solutions on
the horizon for dealing with the threats from asteroids. Mr. Chairman,
American ingenuity, such as the VASIMR electric propulsion technology,
will lead the way as part of the solution to the threat from asteroids.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Submitted statement by Representative Donna F. Edwards
It was clear from the first hearing the Committee held on this
issue a few weeks ago that the problem of near-Earth objects (NEO)
impacting Earth and possibly causing great harm is worrisome but
preventable--if we put our minds and resources into it.
It is also clear that this Committee has been at the forefront of
ensuring that NASA be tasked with detecting such NEOs.
Unfortunately, it appears that at the present time, we still have a
way to go.
Just take what recently transpired in Hawaii.
According to media reports, construction and staff jobs at the Pan-
STARRS telescope system in Hawaii, which is used for near-Earth object
observation, among other purposes, had to be rescued by an anonymous $3
million donation after federal funding was cut.
Imagine that, a capability critical to saving the world from
potentially hazardous asteroids needed to be saved by a private donor.
But wait, it doesn't stop there. Because of the recent sequester,
NASA is suspending, effective immediately, all education and public
outreach activities. In terms of scope, this includes all education and
public outreach efforts conducted by programs and projects.
Needless to say, it will be hard to increase public awareness of
what NASA is doing in detecting NEOs under this suspension.
At this hearing, we will hear how nongovernment entities are
proposing to use their own funds to save the Earth by detecting,
characterizing, and perhaps even deflecting asteroids.
Some of these entities are driven by a noble cause, to save
humanity, and are banking on philanthropists to finance their efforts.
Others, who are planning to mine asteroids to extract ore and
minerals, see their efforts as useful for detection and
characterization, since one needs to know where these asteroids are and
what their composition is likely to be before a mining mission is
chosen.
Now, don't get me wrong. I think it's great if the government
doesn't have to foot the entire bill for proposed missions and
technologies.
But what happens when something does not work, or when donations or
investor contributions do not materialize? Is it prudent for the world
to solely bank on the success of these nongovernment efforts? What
happens when a private initiative is no longer an option? Would the
government need to step in?
So there are a number of questions this Committee should be
examining, and I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on their
perspectives.
Planetary Society Report submitted by Representative Rohrabacher
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