Ten Thousandth Near-Earth Object Unearthed in Space

The 10,000th near-Earth object was detected a few days ago. Pretty cool milestone to reach.  

"When I began surveying for asteroids and comets in 1992, a near-Earth object discovery was a rare event," said Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center. "These days we average three NEO discoveries a day, and each month the Minor Planet Center receives hundreds of thousands of observations on asteroids, including those in the main-belt. The work done by the NASA surveys, and the other international professional and amateur astronomers, to discover and track NEOs is really remarkable." 

Scary and awesome at the same time. Not to be worried though:

This reduces the risk to human populations, because once an NEO threat is known well in advance, the object could be deflected with current space technologies.