the collision and send them back to earth. they will use telescopes to observe how much the impact changed the astroid's trajectory in space. the point is to add this diversion method to keep astroids out of earth's orbit. to quote nasa's defense planetary officer linda johnson, the right time to deflect an asteroid is as far away from the earth as we can. who better to talk than bill nye, ceo of the planetary society, also known as the science guy. great to see you tonight in an area of deep expertise for you. let's talk about this. what is this -- what is the aim here that we're going to deflect asteroids headed for earth so that they miss us? >> yeah, so, everybody -- just when i was a kid, nobody had a good hypothesis as to what happened to the ancient dinosaurs, but now we do. the last 30 years or so, people realize it was almost certainly an asteroid impact that finished them off. and there have been several other enormous asteroid impacts here on earth that would be