That both grants went to Eastern Europe is largely coincidental, says Richard Godwin, executive director of "The Watch," the Space Frontier Foundation project that distributes the money. The recipients were recommended separately by astronomers in the United States. However, Godwin adds, "money goes further over there," due to Eastern Europe's lower costs for various goods and services.

Pravec agrees. "We can do more work for the same amount of money than U.S. astronomers can do," says the Czech scientist. He plans to use the $5,000 for upgrades of the observatory's computers and camera equipment, and possibly for personnel costs.

Several major projects to track potentially dangerous asteroids are under way in the United States, including the U.S. Air Force's LINEAR program and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's NEAT program. However, says Godwin, much current research focuses on finding new asteroids, not on the relatively unglamorous task of monitoring old ones. The East Europeans, he says, have carved out a vital niche by emphasizing the latter.

Time zone differences enhance Eastern Europe's role as well, in that the region's observatories can track asteroids at different hours from observatories in the Western Hemisphere. "When they have daytime, we have night," says Pravec. "We can do the follow-up work immediately."

There remains a concern, however, that most asteroid tracking is done in the Northern Hemisphere, leaving a large portion of the sky unmonitored. According to Godwin, the Space Frontier Foundation had hoped to give a grant to an observatory in Bolivia, but an earthquake in the South American country disrupted that plan.