Armageddon Not in the Stars as UN Takes Aim at Asteroids

For an anxious world suddenly attuned to the risks from asteroids, a reassuring message is coming from Vienna: Don’t worry, earthlings, the United Nations is on the job.

On the same day an asteroid half the size of a U.S. football field will whiz within an astronomical hair’s breadth of Earth, a working group at the UN is wrapping up its 12-year effort on an emergency plan against such threats from space.

“If this asteroid were to hit London, the entire metropolitan area would be gone,” Sergio Camacho, head of the effort at the Vienna-based UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, said in an interview. (This asteroid, DA14, won’t hit London, or anywhere else on Earth, according to the U.S. space agency NASA.)

Camacho’s “Action Team on Near-Earth Objects” is set to propose a global asteroid warning network, which would discover, monitor and characterize the risks of those orbiting objects. The group also suggests a team to oversee a space mission to deflect or blow up an asteroid headed for Earth.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-15/armageddon-not-in-the-stars-as-un-effort-takes-aim-at-asteroids.html