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The Sky at Night team explores the threat of an asteroid impacton earth. Around 2,300 asteroids have been identified as‘potentially hazardous', and it's thought that a million‘near-earth objects' are yet to be accounted for. Detectingthese possible threats is now a priority for space scientists.And they're developing methods of planetary defence that soundlike the stuff of science fiction.Maggie meets Professor AlanFitzsimmons, expert in asteroid observation, to learn how thelatest technology monitors near-earth asteroids. He explainswhich ones are a current concern and why we missed thedangerous Chelyabinsk meteor – a 9,000-ton fireball thatexploded in the sky above Russia. Could it happen again?Chrismeets the Open University's Professor Simon Green, who hasbeen involved in Nasa's recent planetary defence mission Dart.In this mission, a spacecraft was flown directly into anasteroid in a successful attempt to change its orbit, and thehope is that this could be repeated if an asteroid wasidentified as a real threat to earth. Simon demonstrates whysmashing into an asteroid is even more complicated than itsounds.Our inhouse stargazing expert, Pete Lawrence, explainshow to get a rare sighting of Jupiter passing behind the moonand why it is that we can see the moon in the daytime.Andexoplaneteer George Dransfield is at Royal Holloway Universityto meet planetary scientist Dr Queenie Chan. Her recentanalysis of the famous Winchcombe meteorite offers new evidencein support of asteroids bringing life – as well asdestruction – to earth.