The cost to find at least 90 percent of the 20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets by 2020 would be about $1 billion, according to a report NASA will release later this week. The report was previewed Monday at a Planetary Defense Conference in Washington.
Congress in 2005 asked NASA to come up with a plan to track most killer asteroids and propose how to deflect the potentially catastrophic ones.
These are asteroids that are bigger than 460 feet in diameter -- slightly smaller than the Superdome in New Orleans.
But even that search, which has spotted 769 asteroids and comets -- none of which is on course to hit Earth -- is behind schedule. It's supposed to be complete by the end of next year.
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