I want to welcome everyone to today’s subcommittee hearing.
This hearing focuses on an important topic: NASA’s role in planetary defense and the detection of near-Earth objects, commonly known as NEOs.
While not as high profile as some of NASA’s other missions, planetary defense is one of its most important objectives.
A July 2023 Pew Research Center survey asked Americans what NASA’s priorities should be.
The top priority, selected by 60 percent of respondents, was “to monitor asteroids, and other objects that could hit Earth.”
This was the largest share among any category surveyed.
The topic of NEOs received heightened media attention in late 2024 and early 2025.
On December 27, 2024, a NASA-funded network of ground-based telescopes discovered a near-Earth asteroid, designated 2024 YR4.
Initial estimates indicated the asteroid had a greater than one percent chance of impacting Earth in December 2032.
Yet later estimates increased the impact probability to 3.1 percent, roughly a 1 in 30 chance.
Fortunately, subsequent observations and analysis have lowered the impact probability to less than one-hundredth of a percent.
This isn’t the first time we’ve made a discovery like this: In 2004, NASA identified an asteroid named Apophis and found that it will pass within roughly 20,000 miles of Earth in 2029 – less than 1/10th of the distance to the Moon.
This process highlights NASA’s critical role in planetary defense.
The 2005 NASA Authorization Act directed NASA to “detect, track, catalogue, and characterize the physical characteristics” of an estimated 90% of NEOs by 2020.
While NASA has made progress toward this objective, much work remains.
As of last September, NASA estimated it had only identified 44% of the estimated population of NEOs larger than 140 meters, less than half of its goal.
But help is on the way.
The NEO Surveyor mission, the first spacecraft explicitly built to detect near-Earth asteroids and comets, is scheduled to launch by 2028.
NEO Surveyor offers an important capability, as it uses infra-red detectors to track objects that would otherwise be difficult to find due to the glare of sunlight.
I look forward to learning more about this key mission during today’s hearing.
However, NASA’s efforts extend beyond detecting and identifying NEOs.
In 2021, NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test – also known as DART, a mission to research two asteroids that would fly in Earth’s vicinity.
Nearly 10 months later, DART successfully impacted the smaller asteroid, altering its orbit around the larger one, and providing key data.
This mission demonstrated the feasibility of redirecting a NEO and proved out many technologies that could be pivotal in future initiatives.
NASA’s work in planetary defense has long enjoyed bipartisan support on the SST Committee, and I am optimistic that support will continue.
I am eager to hear updates on NASA’s progress toward achieving this congressionally-mandated mission.
I also welcome the opportunity to hear about the development of NEO Surveyor and the ongoing work of the Minor Planet Center in cataloguing these objects.
Thank you to each of our witnesses for being here today, and I look forward to a productive discussion.