Red Tape Hinders Study Asteroid Impacts on Earth

Space.com
Former NASA astronauts are having a webinar streaming tomorrow at 11:30 PST.
Their research shows asteroids impacts are causing nuke-sized explosions much more frequently than assumed.
The military assets that monitor nukes could provide confirmation...but are not because of "national security" restrictions.

I witnessed the La Pas, Mexico meteorite explosion in SoCal 700 miles away so I will be very interested if they mention it tomorrow.

a reply to: Granite

I probably won't catch the info you've advertised. Please do me a favor while you're watching and let us all know if this looks like some plot to get more $$$ for research.

After the Chelyabinsk meteor this line of inquiry makes a lot of sense. Hadn't even thought ahead to think there will be the inevitable plea for $$.

Not just red tape. The program by which the DoD provided fireball data from its satellites and was curtailed a few years ago (with great hullabaloo on ATS) restarted last year but data hasn't not been flowing freely. The problem is a well known refrain:

"Because of budget and personnel reductions on our military partner, they ran into workforce issues to accomplish this task," said Lindley Johnson, NEO program executive within the Planetary Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

"We are already in discussions with them about what it will take to get it restarted," Johnson told Space.com.

m.space.com...

a reply to: Phage
Yes, sequestration...Obama's idea.