A Spacecraft to Hunt Dangerous Asteroids?

NASA needs an asteroid-hunting spacecraft to finally get serious about the potential threat of nearby space rocks that could slam into Earth, experts say. Lately, support is building to finally develop such a mission for both safety and scientific reasons.

An asteroid hunter might take the form of an infrared imaging telescope placed in a Venus-like orbit around the sun. This high-tech spotter scope could view a much larger portion of the sky for possible asteroid threats than could observatories from the Earth.

Such a mission could also provide a rapid means of compiling an inventory of viable Near-Earth Object (NEO) targets for potential human exploration – now on NASA's to-do list as called for by President Barack Obama.…

See SPACE.com for links to further info.