It's a beautiful night—the sky is clear, the stars are twinkling. You see a shooting star! Or is it a comet! Maybe a meteor? Whatever it is, it’s gone in an instant. But what if that whirring bit of space were headed... straight towards the Earth, not past it? Yeah, not so cute. This week, Christina Hernández and Terik Daly of NASA join Jonathan to talk about asteroids, what they’re made of, and how we could protect the planet if one came hurtling towards the place we call home.

Christina Hernández (she/her/hers) is a systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She currently works on Psyche, NASA’s mission to a metal world, as a flight systems engineer. She previously spent over 6 years working on NASA’s Perseverance rover mission as a payload systems engineer. You can follow Christina on Twitter @estrellasycafe. 

Dr. Terik Daly is a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He is the deputy instrument scientist for NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which is the world’s first planetary defense test mission.

For more information on NASA’s upcoming missions, including those mentioned in this episode, you can follow @AsteroidWatch on Twitter. 

Interested in the worlds of our solar system? Visit @NASASolarSystem for the broad picture and @NASAPersevere to check in on our neighbor, Mars!

Join the conversation, and find out what former guests are up to, by following us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN. 

Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook.

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

Love listening to Getting Curious? Now, you can also watch Getting Curious—on Netflix! Head to netflix.com/gettingcurious to dive in.

Our executive producer is Erica Getto. Our associate producer is Zahra Crim. Our editor is Andrew Carson.

Our theme music is “Freak” by QUIÑ; for more, head to TheQuinCat.com.

Getting Curious merch is available on PodSwag.com.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices