NASA’s Advice for Meteor Strike: 'Pray'

Would someone please buy NASA some telescopes? Asked what America could do if a meteorite like the one that hit Russia last month was three weeks away from hitting New York, NASA administrator Charles Bolden Jr.’s answer was “pray.” And we probably wouldn’t even get three weeks’ warning. NASA currently lacks the ability to find and track “small” meteors like the 55-foot one that hit Russia. If we did see one coming and it was still far enough away, apparently the current plan is to ram a spacecraft into it and knock it off course. NASA has only $20.5 million budgeted to detect near-Earth objects, and Bolden suggested at today's House Committee hearing that Congress isn’t taking the problem seriously enough.