Forget about President Obama's State of the Union Address, writes Ray Villard, news director for the Hubble Space Telescope, America's real "Sputnik moment" should be attempting to deflect an asteroid currently hurtling toward Earth.
Earlier this year, Russian scientist Leonid Sokolov of St. Petersburg State University announced his calculations that the asteroid Apophis will pass within 18,000 miles of Earth, close enough to knock geosynchronous satellites out of the sky.
Villard warns, however, that when Apophis comes screaming by on Easter Sunday, April 13, 2036, there's no guarantee it won't stray from course and strike the planet.
"The bottom line is that asteroids are featherweight objects compared to other solar systems bodies. Gravitational forces and even the pressure of sunlight can shove them around," Villard writes in an article for Discovery News. "There are so many dynamical uncertainties affecting asteroid trajectories that Apophis will haunt us right up to 2036, and well beyond."
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