Table 12 lists the instruments that are being used or could be used to search for near-Earth asteroids. Currently, only a few near-Earth asteroids per year are being found. (See figure 6.) Table 13 lists techniques useful in characterizing asteroids and the types of information obtainable using these techniques. To be confident that usable materials could be recovered from asteroids, we need more specific characterization of their composition. A small commitment of resources (a few million dollars per year) to continue and modestly expand the efforts to find and characterize near-Earth asteroids would enable much greater progress to be made.

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