NASA's inspector general blasted the space agency's Near Earth Objects program this week for not being as organized as it should be and for not having a bigger staff to help find potential dangers.
NASA's Near Earth Objects program is meant to hunt and catalog comets, asteroids and relatively large fragments of these objects that pass within 28 million miles of Earth.
Most near-Earth objects disintegrate before reaching Earth's surface, but there are exceptions. A nearly 60-foot meteor exploded over Russia last year, causing significant damage and injuring more than 1,500 people.
In a 44-page report, Inspector General Paul Martin said the Near Earth Objects program needs to be better organized and managed, with a bigger staff.
NASA's science mission chief, former astronaut John Grunsfeld, agreed with the report and said the issues "will be fixed," according to the Associated Press.
"NASA places a high priority on finding and characterizing hazardous asteroids to protect our home planet from them" he said in a statement.
The program has an executive at NASA headquarters and two offices in Massachusetts and California, each with six employees, according to the report, which was released this week.
NASA has been hunting down near-Earth objects bigger than 460 feet across for nearly a decade. The goal was to catalog 90 percent by 2020, a goal they will most likely not reach, according to the report.
Since 1998, NASA has discovered and plotted the orbits of more than 11,000 near-Earth objects, an estimated 10 percent.
Martin's office determined the program has insufficient oversight, and no established milestones to track their progress.
He also believes NASA needs to do a better job watching various observatories looking for near-Earth objects, and joining forces with other U.S. and international agencies, according to AP.
The news comes the same week that the European Space Agency selected a comet to land on this November, which would be an historic moment in space exploration if they are successful.
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