Asteroid's sudden flyby shows blind spot in planetary threat detection - Reuters.com

WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The discovery of an asteroid the size of a small shipping truck mere days before it passed Earth on Thursday, albeit one that posed no threat to humans, highlights a blind spot in our ability to predict those that could actually cause damage, astronomers say.

NASA for years has prioritized detecting asteroids much bigger and more existentially threatening than 2023 BU, the small space rock that streaked by 2,200 miles from the Earth's surface, closer than some satellites.

"We don't know where most of the asteroids are that can cause local to regional devastation," said Terik Daly, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

One major upgrade to NASA's detection arsenal will be NEO Surveyor, a $1.2 billion telescope under development that will launch nearly a million miles from Earth and surveil a wide field of asteroids.

That new telescope will help NASA meet a goal assigned by Congress in 2005: detect 90% of the total expected amount of asteroids bigger than 140 meters, or those big enough to destroy anything from a region to an entire continent.

The agency proposed last year to cut the telescope's 2023 budget by three quarters and a two-year launch delay to 2028 "to support higher-priority missions" elsewhere in NASA's science portfolio.