Perhaps you’ve heard by now that on Monday the stadium

Perhaps you’ve heard by now that on Monday the stadium-sized asteroid 2004 BL86 will make a close but non-threatening pass by the Earth, near enough that you might be able to watch it whizz by with a pair of binoculars. As its name denotes, astronomers have known about this space rock’s existence for over a decade, and while they can say with confidence that it won’t strike the Earth, it’s the other bits of cosmic debris out there we don’t know about that are the real threat, especially those that could only be spotted from the southern sky.

While scientists like those in NASA’s Near Earth Object Program are dedicated to discovering and tracking potentially hazardous asteroids (roughly defined as asteroid or comets with the potential to come within about 4.6 million miles of Earth — 2004 BL86 will come within less than 750,000 miles), humanity still relies largely on dumb luck to protect us from a catastrophic asteroid impact. This fact was demonstrated clearly two years ago when a large meteor went undetected until it exploded in the Earth’s atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, releasing thirty times m0re power than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima and injuring over 1,000. There’s also evidence gathered from the network of sensors that monitors for nuclear explosions that at least two dozen more such impacts have occurred since 2000, mostly in the ocean or the atmosphere.

And yet today we could be even worse off when it comes to detecting approaching space rocks than we were on the day that bolide rocked Russia in 2013. That’s because last year the program in Australia that surveys the southern sky for comets and asteroids that may want to pay us a violent visit was closed down due to a lack of funding.

The Siding Spring Survey was run out of the Australian observatory of the same name. You may recall in the fall that Comet Siding Spring came within a celestial hair’s width of almost smacking into Mars. The comet was so named because it was discovered at Siding Spring observatory. Such a discovery is a lot less likely today. And yet asteroids like 2004 BL86 will continue to make close calls, while some will come much closer.

“We do expect something like the size of the Chelyabinsk meteor to hit Earth once every ten to 20 years,” Brad Tucker, an astronomer working to secure funds for the Siding Spring Survey, told Vice. “That’s not too often, but when something like that occurs you’re essentially detonating a nuclear bomb in the atmosphere.”

He’s not the only one looking for support for detecting threatening space rocks. The B612 Foundation, founded by two astronauts, is raising funds to build and launch its Sentinel Space Telescope, which it hopes will be able to identify the vast majority of potentially hazardous objects.

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