An Asteroid May Kill Us All. Congress Is Pinching Pennies.

When the asteroid named 2014 J025 passed by the Earth in April, it came within 1.1 million miles of the planet -- a close shave by cosmic standards and also the nearest in more than a decade. And J025 was big. At nearly a mile across, it could have killed tens of millions if it had hit a heavily populated area.

While its path was a matter of astronomy, J025’s discovery was largely a matter of luck. NASA is currently required by Congress to focus on locating near-Earth objects (NEOs) that are much smaller than J025, starting with ones bigger than a football field. But the agency has located less than a third of the more than 10,000 that are estimated to be out there, and there’s little chance of finding them all by its 2020 deadline.