But this close encounter does provide a teachable moment for Rusty Schweickart, the Apollo astronaut who, through the B612 Foundation, has been on a mission for years to get the world's powers focused on planning for the inevitable day when we have a losing spin in this never - ending game of «Solar System Roulette» — as a smaller, but
still cataclysmically
dangerous, comet or
asteroid is identified as having an earth - intersecting trajectory.