Asteroid ace keeps NASA grounded
Scientist works on plans to save Earth, even though it’s not his job

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9890268/

By Alan Boyle
Science editor
MSNBC
Updated: 8:01 p.m. ET Nov. 1, 2005

Planetary scientist Don Yeomans laughs at the title of “asteroid czar,” but as the manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program, he’s arguably the go-to guy for asteroids and other celestial objects that could blast us back into the Stone Age.

Over the past decade, Yeomans and his colleagues at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have had to cope with a series of asteroid alerts — arising in part because astronomers are getting so much better at spotting space rocks that have a chance of crossing Earth's orbit sometime in the next century or two.

The biggest concern right now has to do with an asteroid called Apophis, which will have a close encounter with Earth in 2029 and might even hit us in 2036, depending on how its orbit changes between now and then. NASA says Apophis will almost certainly miss Earth — but just in case, Yeomans and other at the space agency have sketched out plans for space missions to divert the asteroid if necessary.

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