Hi, this is Ira Flato, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Today on the show, what disaster plans are in place in case a large asteroid is on track to hit a populated area on Earth?

It was a lot to wrestle with because you have to take into account all this other risk with just taking action with an asteroid.

You might remember a news item from the beginning of the year that felt like it was ripped from the sci-fi movie headlines.

An asteroid, about 180 feet long, had about a 3% chance of hitting

Earth in eight years, and if it did, it would unleash 500 times the amount of energy of the

nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But after further observations, astronomers revised that probability down, way down

to close to zero. So what is our current capability to spot earthbound asteroids? And how would

governments prepare citizens, their citizens, for an impact on a populated area? Here with some of the answers are Dr. Kelly Fast, acting planetary defense officer

at NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, based in Washington,

and Leviticus L.A. Lewis, former female liaison for that office, based in Vienna, Virginia.

Welcome both of you to Science Friday.

Thank you, Ira. Thank you. It's great to be here. Nice to have you both. Kelly, let me begin with

you because it sounded like you had a busy start to the year. Can you take us back to when you

heard about that asteroid, what your reaction was? Yes, it was a busy start to the year. At the end of December,

we heard that an asteroid had been discovered that posed a very small chance of impact in

232. And that's not unusual. This can happen maybe a couple of times a year where something

is discovered like that. And with more

observations, it's found that, no, it's going to safely pass by. But in this case, it was

apparent that this is going to hang around a little longer before we know for sure one way or another.

And so it was an interesting process in January as more observations

were taken to help try to narrow down in 2032 where exactly it was going to go. The worldwide

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