Rush Holt and Donna F. Edwards: What do we do about space debris?

Two unrelated events Friday involving space debris underscore how crucial it is to know what is falling from the sky and what, if any, dangers are posed: A meteor broke apart over rural Russia on Friday morning, injuring more than 1,200 people, and an asteroid passed closer to the Earth’s surface than many of our communications satellites.

Every day about 40 tons of space debris hit the atmosphere, burn and settle to Earth, NASA has found. The majority of the detritus consists of meteoroids no larger than a grain of sand, but even tiny specks pack a wallop: A typical meteor hits Earth traveling at least 7 miles per second, at least 30 times faster than a bullet shot from a handgun. That is why a tiny meteoroid can make such a spectacular shooting star.

According to the Russian Academy of Sciences, the meteor that disintegrated Friday over Siberia weighed in the neighborhood of 10 tons. It was thought to be traveling 10 to 12 miles per second when it broke apart.

Every year or so, such a meteor blazes through the sky somewhere over Earth. But every 100 years or so, Earth is hit by a meteor large enough to cause devastation. Such an impact occurred in 1908 in Tunguska, Russia, when a meteor 100 feet or so in diameter exploded in the Siberian wilderness, releasing about 1,000 times as much energy as the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

To help get a handle on this danger, NASA coordinates the Near-Earth Object Program, which searches for and tracks asteroids and comets that could approach the Earth. About 10,000 near-Earth objects have been discovered, including nearly 900 with a diameter of roughly a kilometer or larger. None is expected to hit Earth anytime soon, but many large objects are believed to remain undetected.

In 2005, Congress set a 15-year deadline for scientists to find 90 percent of the near-Earth objects greater than about 500 feet in diameter — those large enough to cause regional or global devastation. The mandate has been chronically underfunded. The project would require several more dedicated telescopes.

Last year the project received about $20 million, far less than the $50 million that the National Research Council estimated in 2010 was needed to reach the congressional goal by 2030, a decade late. Even when this goal is met, most small asteroids and comets — too small to cause global devastation but still large enough to cause damage far worse than what just occurred in Russia — will remain undetected unless funding is significantly increased.

Another danger is that even if a meteor does not itself cause major damage, any resulting chaos or confusion could lead nations to overreact. In 2002, for example, a meteor exploded over the Mediterranean at a time when India and Pakistan were facing off over the disputed Kashmir region. The U.S. Space Command’s deputy director for operations warned that the meteor might have been misidentified as a nuclear attack, had it come apart over South Asia.

Many countries lack the United States’ sophisticated sensors that can help determine whether a large explosion is nuclear in nature. The damage that could occur if a nation were to misidentify a meteor explosion and launch a counterattack is chilling. Washington should do more to establish an international warning system that can provide credible, near-instant information to countries across the globe whenever a major explosion is detected.

More broadly, Congress should continue to invest in day-to-day disaster planning, including improving coordination among first responders. Such investments would help us respond to relatively frequent events such as hurricanes or earthquakes, as well as infrequent events, such as meteor strikes and terrorist attacks.

When something explodes or falls from the atmosphere, the world needs to know what it is. Impacts like what occurred Friday in Russia are certain to occur. We should make the investments necessary to track near-Earth objects and prepare for disasters of all kinds.

Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., is a physicist and former assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Donna F. Edwards, D-d., is the ranking Democrat on the House subcommittee on space.