tu 24 is spinning around like mad in a very irregular manner and they can't even get an electromagnetic orientation for it yet. It also has a somewhat irregular shape.

Trying to land something on it or hit it with something could alter it's orbit in unpredictable ways while it is close to earth. Might not be a good idea.

The conflicting info about it's orbit is worrisome. The original orbit worked out in Oct 2007 calculated an orbit that had tu24 crossing the ecliptic plane on the same day of it's closest approach to earth, and the closest approach was said to be 1.4 lunar distances.

Then, new data in December showed a closest approach that was about 1.0 lunar distances, and still had tu24 crossing the ecliptic plane on the same day as the closest approach. NASA, however, didn't change the info on their website to reflect the new data.

Then, the first week of January, new data was again available, and this time the closest approach was confirmed to be about 1.0 lunar distances, but the new data also showed a significant change in the orbit: tu24 was said to be crossing the ecliptic plane around January 23rd, six days earliar than the previous orbit!

Then, around January 15th, NASA put out the worldwide request for astrometry to plan an observation January 23rd and 24th. And, they still had the original, October orbit on their website. They aslo removed tu24 from the impact risk list.

As of January 22nd, NASA published the astrometry and planned the observations. Well, the astrometry info confirms the 1.0 lunar distance closest approach, AND the original path which shows tu24 crossing the ecliptic plane on the same day as it's closest approach.

Now, just from basic geometry, there is obviously something wrong. Personally, I don't believe the closest approach is 1.0 lunar distance. I think it's less. I'm not sure what comes into play once you get an orbit inside 1.0 lunar distance. I'm not entirely convinced that it will hit us, but I'm also not convinced that the experts can really rule that out for certain.