By Jay Tate from Knighton's Spaceguard Centre

"My interest in astronomy began on 14 June 1977. I was in the British Army and was carrying out surveillance in southern Armagh with my number two and my signaller. We'd been there for four days and were getting a little bored. My signaller was scanning the sky with his night-vision goggles when he pointed at a star and asked 'what's that sir?'.

As an officer, you're supposed to know everything but I couldn't answer his question so I went out and bought a basic book on astronomy. It turned out not to be a star but a planet. I've since done a lot more research as well as an Open University course but I still have that book somewhere.

Several years later, I became interested in Near Earth Objects and the threat posed to the world by the possibility of a collision with an asteroid or comet. I was still in the army at the time and had been posted to Canada for three years.

While holidaying in Wyoming in July 1994, fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet hit the planet Jupiter. We could see the scars left by the impact on the surface of Jupiter through an ordinary telescope. Those dust scars remained visible for weeks if not months. Some of them were bigger than the Earth even though the fragments of comet were actually quite small. What, I wondered, would happen if a comet hit the Earth?

Not surprisingly, there was a lot of interest at the time in Near Earth Objects and the US tasked NASA to investigate further. I began my own research and began campaigning in this country by writing to the media, making speeches etc.

In 1999, a team from Spaceguard UK (the organisation that I founded) was invited to the Minister's office - Lord Sainsbury - at the DTI. Following that meeting, the Government set up Task Force on Potentially Hazardous Near Earth Objects that produced an excellent report. All 14 recommendations were accepted but in my opinion, only one has been fully implemented to date - namely the recommendation to nominate a Government Department to be responsible for the project.

A couple of years later my wife and I moved to the observatory in Knighton. It had been a private residence with its own observatory which had been built in 1995. In 2001, we opened the Spaceguard Centre here and since then we've had around 11,000 visitors - general public as well as schools, clubs and associations from across Wales and farther afield.

Mid Wales is an excellent place for star-gazing as we have the lowest levels of light pollution in England and Wales. We have several powerful telescopes here and a range of other equipment - including a satellite weather station, a planetarium, a seismometer and a camera obscura. We also have access to two Faulkes telescopes in Hawaii and Australia, which can be controlled from the Spaceguard Centre in Knighton.

We are the Spaceguard Foundation's International Near Earth Object Information Centre - which means that we do follow up work on near earth asteroids and comets as well as tracking them and we also act as the interface between astronomers and the media.

The threat of an asteroid or comet hitting the earth is the most serious threat facing our species. As far as we know, it's not an imminent threat. Having said that, it could happen after lunch - we're just not doing the work to find out more. It would be nice to say it's not going to happen for a few centuries but the truth is, we just don't know. It's like driving a car in the middle of the night, with no headlights and your eyes shut. The campaign will continue."

Written by Jay Tate from the Knighton Spaceguard Centre