Dana Rohrabacher: “my amendment offered by Mr. Feeney encourages NASA to seek increased international cooperation to find and characterize…”

“my amendment offered by Mr. Feeney encourages NASA to seek increased international cooperation to find and characterize all natural bodies in outer space over 140 meters in size that pass close to the Earth, referred to as near-Earth objects. Estimates of the total numbers of such objects vary from 25,000 to 100,000. This threat to the Earth is a worldwide matter of potentially catastrophic proportions should a collision with Earth occur, and the responsibility of dealing with it should not fall entirely on the United States or NASA, in particular. The motivation and timing for this amendment arises from discussions with Russian and German government officials on furthering cooperation with the U.S. in science and technology that occurred during a CODEL that I attended over the Memorial Day recess. The specific suggestion to cooperate in the effort to find and characterize near-Earth objects was greeted with great enthusiasm by the government officials with whom I met during the CODEL. The initiative encouraged under my amendment is intended to provide relief for the enormous burden being placed on NASA to find and characterize the vast number of these objects estimated to exist.”