Neil deGrasse Tyson

The next close encounter, if my records are correct, is in 2182 for Bennu.

And given our orbital uncertainties, I think there's a chance it could hit Earth.

in 2182.

That should be plenty of time to build a defense system to deflect it.

It should be, unless funding continues to wane.

Oh, then we're screwed.

So, but as geologists, you probably don't think much about asteroid collisions the way the astronomers do.

Is that correct?

That was very blunt there, Harold.

So the probability that I last remembered, maybe it's been refined since I last checked it.

It was a 1 in 2,700 chance of hitting Earth in September of 2182.

Who cares?

Who cares?

It sounds like, oh, that won't happen then.

But there are people who go to Vegas betting on way worse odds than that, expecting to win.

So these are near-Earth asteroids that we want to keep an eye on.

And the more we know about them, the more we can maybe go back to them in the future and nudge them out of harm's way.

Yeah, just to bring this to closure, could you just reflect on where you guys are as geologists?

When I think of the history of...

collaborations, if we go back before 1968 and the photo of Earthrise over the lunar surface, it was not until NOAA was founded in the year 1970 that I ever saw