Happy Asteroid Day! Unless one of them hits Earth, of course. In that case, not happy at all.

Casual observers might think the risk of a large asteroid strike—the single worst thing that could happen to our planet—has gone away. Thanks to diligent searching by ground-based telescopes over the last 20-plus years, 95 percent of the largest (kilometer or bigger) asteroids in our planetary neighborhood—any of which could end civilization if they struck us—have been identified. None of them is on a collision course. And next year, a spacecraft called DART will try to nudge a small asteroid enough to change its orbit around a bigger asteroid—a tiny first step toward being able to deflect a future attacker.

Click link below to keep reading…

https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/nasas-most-important-mission-finally-track-180978093/