Humans to asteroids: watch out! can humans avoid the fate of the dinosaurs by deflecting the next killer asteroid?

• Author: Schweickart, Russell
• Position: OPINION

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A few months ago, a 30-foot-wide asteroid zipping along at 38,000 miles per hour flew 28,000 miles above Singapore.

Why should you care about a near miss from such a tiny space object? Because asteroids don't always miss.

If even a little one struck a city, millions of people could be wiped out because of its speed. And if the object is bigger, well, just think about the asteroid seven to eight miles across that annihilated the dinosaurs (and 75 percent of all species) 65 million years ago.

Fortunately, our advanced telescopes now allow us to predict dangerous asteroid impacts decades ahead of time. We can even use today's space technology and fairly simple spacecraft to alter an asteroid's orbit enough to avoid a collision. We simply need to get a program up and running.

President Obama has set a goal of landing astronauts on an asteroid by 2025 as a precursor to a human mission to Mars. Asteroids are deep-space bodies orbiting the sun, not the Earth, and traveling to one would mean sending humans into solar orbit for the first time. Facing the challenges of radiation, navigation, and life support on a months-long trip millions of miles from home would be a perfect learning journey before a Mars trip.

One of the things we stand to gain is access to what may be the ultimate resource repositories. Asteroids (and other near-Earth objects, like comets) are mineral-rich bodies bathed in a continuous flood of sunlight. It's amazing to think that one day we may be able to access fuel, materials, and even water in space instead of digging deeper and deeper into our planet for what we need. But even more important, our asteroid efforts may be the key to the survival of millions.

Siberia, 1908

To be fair, the closest we've come in recent history to the sort of impact that...