Asteroids!!!

99942 Apophis is an asteroid named for the Egyptian god of destruction. It may hit Earth, so Russia's top space researchers are going to have a closed-door meeting to plan a mission to deflect it. Apparently Russians are sensitive about this because a meteorite hit Siberia in 1908 that knocked over about 80 million trees. And Apophis is three times the size of that one. That's 240 million trees! NASA has ruled out the possibility of a collision in 2029, claiming the asteroid will remain 18,300 miles above Earth's surface.

Anatoly N. Perminov is the head of Russia's space agency (RKA). In a radio interview, Perminov said, "I don't remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032. We're talking about people's lives here. It's better to spend several million dollars and create this system, which would not allow a collision to happen, than wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people."

I'm not going to compare NASA and RKA, but I will say that Perminov might want to start remembering things exactly before he spends several million dollars on a spaceship.