The total absence of any word on non-US efforts in NEO search and research activities in some recent documents circulated by David Morrison and Clark Chapman to the international community shows that there is an obvious lack of information, that we would like to fill partially with this short communication. We do feel that the existence of other active NEO search program should be mentioned in the discussion of the future organisation of a so called Spaceguard Survey. We also think that the effort by the Beijing NEO search program operated at the Xinglong station is worth mentioning too. And most importantly, the truly globally spread network of both professional and amateur groups performing the necessary follow up obserations. Consulting the daily updates and other NEO related pages provided by the excellent services of the IAU's Minor Planet Center gives a good opportunity to see the international contributions actually made on a routine basis.
Nobody can agree on the staion's true price tag.
But that will mean a major upgrade, as the system, now run by the Department of Defense's Space Surveillance Network, has trouble tracking particles less than 10 centimetres across. The station's hull could be punctuated by these particles. Tracking down to 1 centimetre is a very tough job. It's something that we must work on. How this work will be funded is still unclear.