Summary: Last month, a fireball exploded over Russia, destroying buildings and injuring more than 1,200 people, the result of a meteor hitting the Earth's atmosphere. The same day, an asteroid half the size of a football came within 17,200 miles of the planet. So what's the risk of the human race going the way of the dinosaurs? What technology do we have in place to track giant space rocks? Our guest: Ed Lu, a former NASA astronaut and CEO of the B612 Foundation, which is building one of the largest telescopes in the world to discover, map, and track asteroids whose orbits approach Earth. Also joining us: Hal Weaver, planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and Midday on Science contributor John Monahan.
