According to an announcement made by NASA last week, it was confirmed that the mission to protect the earth from asteroids by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been advanced.

It was also confirmed that the Planetary Defense Coordination Office has been established in formalizing efforts on detecting and tracking objects that are near to the earth. Reports states that the PDCO has been assigned responsible for supervising all NASA funded projects. The objective will be to find and characterize comets and asteroids passing near the orbit of the Earth and around the Sun.

Like Us on Facebook

The latest news is that, NASA has advanced the Asteroid Redirect Mission for paving a way for human to tread on Mars. The mission is aimed at identifying, capturing and relocating an asteroid to a stable position around the moon's orbit, so that astronauts are able to send its samples back to Earth. It is reported that the advancement of the mission included work on controlling humidity, removing carbon dioxide and regulating oxygen to protect the astronauts sent to Mars.

There are reports that, each year, there are about 1,500 objects near to the Earth have been detected, and more than 13,500 all sizes of NEOs have been discovered. It all began after NASA started funding surveys way back in 1998. Lindley Johnson, a planetary defense officer at NASA, commented that they have been able to detect 92 percent of the objects, which are larger in size than a Kilometer out of a possible population of 1,000.

Talking to TechNewsWorld, Lindley said that till date, they have detected about 7,000 objects that are 140 meters in size or larger, out of an estimated population of 25,000.

Comets and asteroids that are tracked by the PDCO are potentially dangerous, and according to him, there are apprehensions that any object coming within some million miles of the Earth would be affected by the Earth's gravitational pull.

Watch hundred of giant near-earth asteroids video below: