Protecting U.S. against threats from nature.

U.S. Northern Command is readying itself for natural disasters as well as man-made threats.

When the United States dispatched aircraft carriers, Coast Guard vessels and a hospital ship to Southeast Asia during the aftermath of a massive tsunami in December, two investigators from NORTHCOM also headed to the area in an effort to glean lessons for natural disasters within their area of responsibility.

Planners at the command currently are analyzing the information retrieved by two data-collection specialists who spent a month analyzing tsunami clean-up efforts. The information will be used to help the command prepare for such a wide-scale event hammering the continental United States, Alaska, Canada, Mexico or the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Dec. 26 tsunami claimed more than 160,000 lives in 11 nations.

The pair of researchers, one a subject matter expert and the other from the command's surgeon general's office, teamed with Pacific Command to gather information and data for the cleanup, and bring that information back to Northern Command to help the staff there better prepare for future disasters.

NORTHCOM officials said the lessons learned would likely be incorporated into future exercises.

Steps also are being taken to counter extraterrestrial threats. In late March, the House Science Committee passed a bill that would help discover near-Earth asteroids. House Resolution 1023 establishes $3,000 cash awards to encourage amateur astronomers to discover and track near-Earth asteroids.

NASA would award the money based on the recommendation of the Minor Planet Center of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass.

In 2004, a large as asteroid, with an impact equal to 1,000-megatons, was calculated to pass a tenth of the distance between the Earth and moon--a very near miss.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in April announced that the asteroid's orbit would result in more dangerous close encounters in the future, as its orbit changes after its first brush past Earth in 2029. Such danger periods could come every five to nine years after, the scientists warned.

This July, a probe called "Deep Impact" will blast a hole the size of the Roman Coliseum into a comet, using a 4.8-ton charge. The explosion will help determine the composition of these interstellar travelers.

The expedition is focused on research, but the data could prove crucial to deflect a future collision, NASA scientists said.