A huge asteroid brushes by planet Earth Friday. Closer than our own satellites. We’ll look at our very close call, and asteroid defense.


On Point with Tom Ashbrook (WBUR): A Near Miss: Fending Off Asteroids

February 15, 2013 podcast discussing Asteroid DA14, B612 Foundation and Sentinel Mission.

Ed Lu on NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday

Last month, a fireball exploded over Russia, destroying buildings and injuring more than 1,200 people, the result of a meteor hitting the Earth's atmosphere. The same day, an asteroid half the size of a football field came within 17,200 miles of the planet. So what's the risk of the human race going the way of the dinosaurs? What technology do we have in place to track giant space rocks? Our guest: Ed Lu, a former NASA astronaut and CEO of the B612 Foundation, which is building one of the largest telescopes in the world to discover, map, and track asteroids whose orbits approach Earth. Also joining us: Hal Weaver, planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and Midday on Science contributor John Monahan. 