The stars aligned last week to increase interest in a subject that has long been treated as somewhat of a trifle—the threat posed by Near Earth Objects. Several NEOs—a term that encompasses asteroids, meteors, comets, and the like—made headlines, including a close shave with an asteroid and the spectacular appearance of a meteor over Russia on the same day. Similar (if less sensational) events also occurred over California and Cuba.

The barrage of heavenly bodies isn’t connected, or even all that rare, but it could serve as some cosmic PR for groups that work to track NEOs and mitigate the risks of impacts—an often unsung and underfinanced endeavor.

“Wouldn’t it be silly if we got wiped out because we weren’t looking?” Edward Lu, a former astronaut and pioneer in asteroid deflection, told the New York Times. “This is a wake-up call from space. We’ve got to pay attention to what’s out there.”

Data from a NASA program called NEOWISE indicates there are about 20,500 asteroids near Earth, with 4,700 close enough to be hazardous (check out this visual if that doesn’t sound alarming). All those rocks whizzing around our planetary head, however, have failed to drum up much in the way of funds for tracking or defense. That’s largely due to the nebulous nature of the threat, according to some experts.

“I think the governments of the world are very good at confronting a threat that is quantified: real time, date, place,” Popular Science quotes Lu as saying. “When things are probabilistic? We’re just not good at that.”

In the United States, that dynamic has resulted in lackluster government support for programs that track NEOs—only 0.05 percent of NASA’s budget is dedicated to its Near Earth Object program, according to Wired, and a 2005 congressional mandate to discover 90 percent of larger NEOs by 2020 is woefully underfunded and behind schedule. Despite the fact that we could probably deflect a doomsday asteroid if we knew it was coming, there’s been little political will to move programs along.

“It’s not officially on anybody’s to-do list in terms of legal requirements,” former astronaut Russell Schweickart, told the New York Times’ Andy Revkin in a Skype interview. “NASA does have a legal requirement to discover asteroids and to do certain research work, track them and catalog them, etc., but NASA does not have responsibility nor does anyone else, to protect the Earth from potential impacts. This is really public safety. This is not science or exploration.”

Schweickart, along with Lu and several other colleagues, established the B612 Foundation (named after the asteroid in Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince) in 2002 with the goal of changing an asteroid’s orbit. While the group proved this was possible, they also realized it needed to be done decades before impact, according to their website. With the realization that early detection is key, the nonprofit foundation began a campaign to raise $450 million to build a space-based, infrared telescope capable of fulfilling the mandate originally issued to NASA.

“It’s one of the nice things about being a private entity,” Schweickart said. “We can focus on something that’s of very great importance and we can see it through, notwithstanding the rapidly changing political environment.”

The B612 Foundation isn’t the only organization trying to shore up the gaps in government spacewatching. At least one other group has its eyes on the sky in a significant way and investors of all ilk have shown an interest in similar projects. Unfortunately, publicity and entrepreneurship can only take us so far to prevention. Ultimately, we’ll need to find worldwide accord on the topic, Schweickart said.

The United Nations is on the case, but considering the intricacies of international negotiations, any type of agreement might be light years away.

“The easiest way to state it is that you can’t deflect an asteroid without putting temporarily at risk other nations and people who were not initially threatened,” Schweickart said. “Ultimately we may watch ourselves get hit with the first one that threatens, hopefully in the ocean, while everybody is still debating at the UN But hopefully that will only happen once.”