How scientists know we’re not going to get squashed by an asteroidPublished: October 22, 2020, 10:12 amA NASA spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx just collected a piece of a potentially hazardous asteroid to bring a sample back to Earth. The U.S. space agency also has several other asteroid spacecraft missions in the works and is not alone in its determination to better understand asteroids in order to deflect large space rocks but also to learn from these fossils of our solar system.