US Report NASA Can't Track Deadly Asteroids

A new U.S. government report says the U.S. space agency does not have enough money to find asteroids that could destroy life on Earth.

The National Academy of Sciences said Wednesday that Congress has yet to give NASA the money it needs to build telescopes to track the potentially deadly space objects.

Congress passed a law in 2005 ordering NASA to find 90 percent of asteroids bigger than 140 kilometers by 2020.

The academy report says NASA cannot meet this goal under its existing budget.

The report notes that the United States is the only country on the planet that has such a program to detect dangerous asteroids.

Some scientists believe a massive asteroid striking the Earth 65 million years ago was responsible for making dinosaurs extinct.