UNITED NATIONS -- The countdown begins next week for the United Nations to take on the task of saving the world -- not from the usual scourges of war, disease or poverty, but from an asteroid attack.

Former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is among experts who say the planet needs an international agreement on who does what if we face a direct hit. The first of four international workshops aimed at drawing up a protocol begins in Strasbourg, France, on May 9.

The average Earth-constrained soul worries little about falling victim to a "near-Earth object" strike. Astronauts, however, often see it differently. Under the leadership of the Association of Space Explorers, Hadfield and other former spacemen have argued for a political plan to use technology to deflect all but the most immovable Earth-bound asteroids.

"When people have had a chance to leave Earth, it tends to give us a different perspective," Hadfield said from Moscow, where he is serving as operations chief for the International Space Station.

Noting that an estimated 1,000 tonnes of meteorites burn up on their way toward Earth every day, Hadfield said the craters and scars from objects that made it through our protective atmosphere are a sobering sight for space travellers.

"Every once in awhile, a big-enough one comes that has a major impact," Hadfield says. "But because, for the first time in history, we have the technology to detect one of these things as it is coming, it would be irresponsible of us not to have a plan for both (predicting) where it might hit and (doing) something about it."
Click here to find out more!
The most devastating strike in recent history came in 1908 when an enormous asteroid or piece of comet caused an explosion as big as that set off by Castle Bravo, the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated by the United States. The space rock resulted in what has become known as the Tunguska Event at the location of the river of the same name in Siberia.

While we may today be able to use rockets to push or pull away such an object before it collides with Earth, complex problems remain.

Who, for example, should carry out and pay for such an operation? And what if the asteroid were hurtling towards, say, the United States, and American deflection efforts caused it to crash into China? Would Washington have to indemnify Beijing? In the absence of a fixed remedy, is there a danger that Beijing would interpret the U.S. action as an act of war?

World diplomats, scientists, academics, international law experts and even insurance officials are invited to the workshops. The goal is to have a draft protocol on asteroid countermeasures ready for presentation by 2009 to the UN's Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart first suggested creating an international protocol at the 2005 congress of the space explorers' association, which he founded.

Later that year, the U.S. Congress asked NASA, the U.S. space agency, to expand an asteroid-tracking project called the Spaceguard Goal to include asteroids 140 metres in diameter and larger. The project was also supposed to propose ways to deflect those that menace our planet.

-- CanWest News Service