Carrie Nugent

The best thing to do is to study these asteroids so we know the range of parameters we would have to deal with and also to find them so we have as much time as possible to prepare. ”

The basic method to find asteroids hasn't changed much in hundreds of years. So asteroids in a telescope look just like stars with one exception: They move with time. ”

I think that, a lot of times, people have this idea that the solar system is entirely explored, that we have sent spacecraft to every planet, we've taken beautiful pictures of everything, and that it's kind of done. ”

Our solar system is actually a wild frontier, teeming with different, diverse places: planets and moons, millions of objects of ice and rock. ”

An asteroid impact is a preventable natural disaster. It's in part preventable because we have the technology, and it's in part preventable because it's predictable. ”

On the whole, asteroids tend to leave Earth alone. And day to day, there really isn't cause for most people to give them any thought. But despite being remote objects that most people have never seen, asteroids, and the threat they pose, come up an awful lot in popular culture. ”

Most astronomical work has to do with things that are very, very far away and don't affect our lives very much. ”