Russia To Spend $2 Billion On ‘Asteroid Defense’: Report

The Russian government are speeding up a 58-billion-ruble ($2 billion) program to protect the nation against threats from outer space, claimed Russia Today News on Tuesday, after a meteor crashed into a community in the Ural mountains last week, injuring at least 950 people – and earning international attention thanks to online viral footage.

The Russian government are speeding up a 58-billion-ruble ($2 billion) program to protect the nation against threats from outer space, claimed Russia Today News on Tuesday, after a meteor crashed into a community in the Ural mountains last week, injuring at least 950 people – and earning international attention thanks to online viral footage.

According to the report, scientists from the Institute of Astronomy at Russia’s Academy of Sciences and the Central Engineering Research Institute, the nation’s leading space industry enterprise, had submitted the program to the national space agency, Roskosmos; while Roskosmos also sought approval from the head of Russia’s defense industry, Deputy PM Dmitry Rogozin, before presenting it to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Lidia Rykhlova, from the Institute of Astronomy, said that Russia would have to modernise and fully computerise its 60 cm lens telescopes, while additional larger telescopes would also have to be installed.

“There are a lot of asteroids orbiting close to Earth and every year up to 1,000 more are being discovered,” Rykhlova said, citing the importance of early detection.

[quote]“We know about 90 per cent of kilometre-class asteroids, their orbits are well known and predictable. As for the smaller 40-50 metre ones – we still have insufficient observation apparatus. The more we observe – the more of them we find,” she added, claiming that it would still take at least a month to eliminate a possible asteroid threat, if it was detected early.[/quote]

Vladimir Lipunov, head of the laboratory for space monitoring at Moscow State University, told Interfax news agency that it would take about two years to modernize all of Russia’s existing telescopes into one network. An additional five years would be needed to create a network of larger telescopes across the globe, Lipunov said.

[quote]“It will cost a mere trifle. What [Russian billionaire] Roman Abramovich paid for Chelsea [football club] would cover all the costs of the project,” he added.[/quote]

Meanwhile, US space agency NASA (or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) also announced plans to improve its asteroid detection systems, after another 45-meter in diameter asteroid, known as 2012 DA14, narrowly missed Earth on the same day as the Russian meteorite.

Ten years ago, NASA would not have been able to detect 2012 DA14, admitted Lindsey Johnson, a near earth object (NEO) project manager at NASA to AFP, highlighting that 2012 DA14 could have obliterated a large city if it had hit the ground.

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Former NASA astronauts and scientists last year also launched a project designed to finance, build and launch the first private space telescope to track asteroids. The foundation, called B612, is trying to raise $450 million to build and deploy a space telescope in orbit around the sun, at a distance of 273 million kilometers from the Earth, to detect most objects that are otherwise not visible.

“This event in Russia and the pass of the larger asteroid 2012 DA14 are good reminders that many thousands of objects like it pass near Earth daily,” said Ray Williamson, who is participating in UN discussions on the threat of near-Earth objects (NEOs), to the Huffington Post.

Watch: Footage of the Russian Meteor Strike