Donald Savage

Headquarters, Washington, DC July 14, 1998

(Phone: 202/358-1727)

Mary Beth Murrill

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
(Phone: 818/354-5011)

RELEASE: 98-123

NASA ESTABLISHES NEAR-EARTH OBJECT

PROGRAM OFFICE AT JET PROPULSION LABORATORY

A new program office to coordinate NASA-sponsored efforts

to detect, track and characterize potentially hazardous asteroids
and comets that could approach Earth will be established at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA.

NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office will focus on the

goal of locating at least 90 percent of the estimated 2,000
asteroids and comets that approach the Earth and are larger than
about 2/3-mile (about 1 kilometer) in diameter, by the end of the
next decade.

"These are objects that are difficult to detect because of

their relatively small size, but are large enough to cause global
effects if one hit the Earth," said Dr. Donald K. Yeomans of JPL,
who will head the new program office. "Finding a majority of this
population will require the efforts of researchers at several NASA
centers, at universities and at observatories across the country,
and will require the participation by the international astronomy
community as well."

"We determined that, in order to achieve our goals, we need

a more formal focusing of our near-Earth object tracking efforts
and related communications with the supporting research
community," said Dr. B. Carl Pilcher, science director for Solar
System Exploration in NASA's Office of Space Science, NASA
Headquarters. "I want to emphasize that science research
solicitations and resulting peer reviews, international
coordination, and strategic planning regarding future missions
will remain the responsibilities of NASA Headquarters."

In addition to managing the detection and cataloging of

near-Earth objects, the new NASA office will be responsible for
facilitating communications between the astronomical community and
the public should any potentially hazardous objects be discovered
as a result of the program, Pilcher said.

JPL was selected to host the program office because of its

expertise in precisely tracking the positions and predicted paths
of asteroids and comets. No significant additional staff hiring
at JPL is expected at this time.

A fact sheet describing NASA's research and spacecraft

missions related to asteroids and comets is available on the
Internet at the following address:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/facts/HTML/FS-023-HQ.htm

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