This is only an interim report, and most major decisions and discussions have been deferred to the final report. Nonetheless, I recommend that everyone READ the pdf and think about the issues discussed or alluded-to within it.

I reproduce here the majority of the preface, which sets-out the situation quite cogently:-

The statement of task requires the committee to include an assessment of the costs of various
alternatives, using independent cost estimating. Options that blend the use of different facilities (groundand
space-based) or involve international cooperation may be considered. Each study phase will result in
a report to be delivered on the schedule provided below. Key questions to be addressed during each
phase of the study are the following:

Task 1: NEO Surveys
What is the optimal approach to completing the NEO census called for in the George E.
Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey section of the 2005 NASA Authorization Act to detect,
track, catalogue, and characterize the physical characteristics of at least 90 percent of
potentially hazardous NEOs larger than 140 meters in diameter by the end of year 2020? Specific
issues to be considered include, but are not limited to, the following:

• What observational, data-reduction, and data-analysis resources are necessary to achieve
the Congressional mandate of detecting, tracking, and cataloguing the NEO population of
interest?

• What physical characteristics of individual objects above and beyond the determination
of accurate orbits should be obtained during the survey to support mitigation efforts?
• What role could be played by the National Science Foundation’s Arecibo Observatory in
characterizing these objects?

• What are possible roles of other ground- and space-based facilities in addressing survey
goals, e.g., potential contributions of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and the
Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan STARRS)?

Task 2: NEO Hazard Mitigation
What is the optimal approach to developing a deflection capability, including
options with a significant international component? Issues to be considered include, but
are not limited to, the following:

• What mitigation strategy should be followed if a potentially hazardous NEO is identified?

• What are the relative merits and costs of various deflection scenarios that have been
proposed?

NASA and NSF requested an initial report for the first task no later than September 30, 2009.
This interim report responds to that requirement, although the committee’s work on this task is not yet
complete.

Congress has charged the committee to recommend ways to discover and (partially) characterize
90 percent of NEOs exceeding 140 meters in diameter by the year 2020 (smaller objects are not
discarded, once found). However, during its first meeting, the committee was explicitly asked by
congressional staff to consider whether or not the congressionally established discovery goals should be
modified. The committee’s work on this task is also incomplete.

In addition to evaluating the capability of currently available resources, the committee is studying
a range of proposals for future surveys. The committee will evaluate these proposals in terms of their
implications for NEO discovery and/or characterization. These proposals range from space-based
missions in the infrared to ground-based surveys in the visible spectrum, to be conducted with various
aperture sizes and numbers of telescopes. The committee will also consider combinations of these
proposed projects, including combinations of ground- and space-based approaches. This consideration of
projects and of the costs associated with them is necessary to formulate recommendations for possible
future congressional action.

The committee has thus deferred most of its findings and all of its recommendations for the final
report, due at the end of 2009.