This is CBS Iron the World. Hotel Mars, episode end, continuing with David Livingston, Dr. Space of the space show.

And it's a great privilege to speak to MIT Professor Richard Binzel, who is part of the mission to intercept Apophis, the near-Earth object that

will pass within geosynchronous orbit.

That means very close in 2029.

Those in Europe, I believe, will be able to see it, flash across the sky.

It will be like a meteor, a pretty large meteor, so it'll be

distinctive, maybe a moving star across the sky. At the same time, there are other near-earth

objects out there, and we're discussing one called, that hit at Chellubensk in 2013, and we

learn from that it comes out of nowhere.

Professor, I interrupted you, as you were saying,

we don't yet discern something that small.

But I understand we also don't discern things that come out of the sun.

Do I have that correct?

A different orbit than what struck the Yucatan?

That's right, John.

You know, our telescopes on the Earth have to worry about day, night cycles, weather, and things like that.

And, you know, we're really, the surveys that we do have for asteroids are really concerned about finding the largest ones first.

We don't throw out the small guys that we find, but, you know, it's basically a large funnel

where the largest asteroids that have the most consequences are the ones we are working on finding first.

Things as small as Chelyabinsk, there's probably millions of those out there,

and so it's a big task to find them. Fortunately, things like Chelyabinsk, you know, maybe happen

every century or so, and most of those are over water, and so they're incredibly, incredibly rare.

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