Planetary security

Planetary Defense: A New Hot Market 

If there is one thing more important than national defense, it’s planetary defense.

There are objects in outer space that could potentially wipe out humanity and they are not malevolent little green men in spaceships. They are asteroids and comets, and a bigger than average sized one striking Earth would be the equivalent of the United States, Russia, China and the whole rest of the “club” popping off all their nukes at once.

With little fanfare, NASA in January opened up its planetary defense coordination office with a mandate to identify potential chunks of rock hurdling toward Earth and to stop them if possible.

The 2016 budget, which was recently passed, allocated $50 million this year alone for the office, five times what has been budgeted for detection and mitigation of “near-Earth” objects in the past.

Big defense contractors — particularly those involved in space such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman — will most likely be seeking contracts in this emerging new defense market. If a mission is needed to stop a killer asteroid, $50 million will be a drop in the bucket.