COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO -- The U.S. Space Command is reviewing a plan to create a clearinghouse that gathers and analyzes data regarding impending Earth impacts from asteroids or comets. The information node would also assess possible damage stemming from an incoming object. Such a clearinghouse, if established, would merge military and civilian talent to help minimize damage and loss of life due to a strike from space.

Science Applications International Corporation's (SAIC) Space, Air and Information Group undertook the study here, labeling it the Natural Impact Warning Clearinghouse Concept of Operations.

The report's range of findings and recommendations are now under consideration by high level officials within the U.S. Space Command, the organization that funded the work.

The SAIC study looked into identifying key players that would be involved in not only asteroid and comet detection, but also consequences resulting from a cosmic hit. Groups were studied that sift through astronomical data, those that determine risk of impact, and organizations capable of modeling the aftermath of an Earth impactor.

"The key is to take highly technical data, reduce it, and process that information into something that is comprehensible and trusted by decision makers in various communities," said Timothy K. Roberts, the SAIC analyst that headed the study.

"What we've put together is the basis of an approach to be proactive," Roberts told SPACE.com. "Or you can wait and be reactive, hoping that all those astronomers are right and we have years and years of warning," he said.

Roberts said the SAIC work is meant to find a way to bridge an information gap. "That is a gulf that nobody has crossed," Roberts said. "What is missing is a way to take technical information and put it into terms that decision makers can understand and use," he said.

Moving piles of astronomical data into formats usable by senior military and civilian groups responsible for impact prediction, mitigation and post-strike issues is sorely needed. Air bursting events -- of which there are already numbers of wake-up calls -- as well as objects smacking the ground must be taken into account, Roberts said.

At present, various groups collect Near Earth Object data. The U.S. military, via its network of spaceborne sensors, also snares loads of useful fireball information - objects that skirt through the Earth's atmosphere.

"But in this application, it's not being used. It never gets to command and control nodes that are trusted inputs to the senior officials in the user community," Roberts said. "They have to be comfortable about the data they are getting," he said.

"There hasn't been a nuclear attack on the United States. But we simulate that a lot. We practice to make sure we get it right. The people in that chain are used to seeing certain things and are used to thinking on a certain scale. What we want to do is put this [asteroid/comet threat] in the same context. I want to make it routine," the SAIC analyst said.

Experts from the U.S. military, NASA, sky monitoring groups, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), took part in the SAIC study. The $92,000 assessment began in earnest last October and was delivered to the U.S. Space Command in June.

Roberts said that the study itself does not say the clearinghouse concept is a U.S. Space Command mission, or a Department of Defense mission, nor a mission of the federal government. "The study merely explores the possibilities," he said.

"To be best of my knowledge, this is the first look at a warning system. The first is rarely the bestbut my objective is to get it on the table," Roberts said.

In defining any interagency melding of capabilities to create a Natural Impact Warning Clearinghouse, there are various options available.

An actual building could house such work, staffed by experts.

Alternatively, the clearinghouse could be co-located between FEMA and part of the newly created United States Strategic Command, the USSTRATCOM Command Center. That entity merges the U.S. Space Command and U.S. Strategic Command (StratCom). The merger is designed to improve combat effectiveness and speed up information collection and assessment needed for strategic decision-making. The merged command -- to be completed in October 2002 -- would be responsible for both early warning of and defense against missile attack as well as long-range conventional attacks. The preferred location for the command headquarters is Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.

Furthermore, this hub could be virtual - a network of analysts and groups that gather, sort through and review, and carry out risk judgements. And in a worst-case mode, groups would model the ramifications of an object cutting into Earth's atmosphere.

"A number of options exists. There are pros and cons for all of them," Roberts said.

"There's a very high analogy between the warning systems we have in place for ballistic and missile and space attackand in what we need to do here. In both cases you are dealing with very low probability, but very high consequence events," Roberts said. "But now it's Mother Nature throwing things at us instead of a bad guy," he said.

The SAIC study did not suggest deflection or destruction strategies for fending off incoming objects. In his view, Roberts said, much more data about the physical makeup of comets and asteroids is urgently needed. A menacing object could be solid rock or a jumble of fragments. Maybe a object headed our way is just a fluffy snowball.

"We haven't got a clueand we need to get a whole bunch of clues," Roberts said.

It's a "virtual certainty", Roberts said, that Earth is going to be on the receiving end of an asteroid or comet. "It is time to take the next step. We need to bring techniques, capabilities, information and procedures together that have been heretofore separated and segmented," he said.

"There is no question. It is a mathematical certainty. This is the one point in timethe one natural disaster that we can influence. I believe our study takes the right direction and is the right next step," Roberts concluded.