It is past time to get serious about planetary defense, The threat of Earth being on the receiving end of a cosmic calling card in the form of an asteroid or comet is real.
There is no question that an asteroid has Earth's name on it.
But where the rock is and when that impact is going to occur is unknown.
The threat posed to mankind by an impact of an asteroid or comet is now widely recognised as one of the most significant risks to human civilisation, yet there is no co-ordinated international effort to identify threatening Near Earth Objects (NEO's) or to deal with them once detected.
There is no Spaceguard program in Australia - government funding stopped in 1996. This is a real problem because who is watching the southern hemisphere?
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