data that theof rosetta spacecraft took that scientists will continue to analyze for years to come. charlie: the associated press wrote, and i will ask you about earth ever, should be threatened by an asteroid, the experience gained from the rosetta mission will prove valuable. guest: in general, when we talk about flying space rocks, we want to understand how they are, how they behave in their orbit. one thing that is interesting is that when we look at asteroids near earth and the upcoming asteroid elated missions that nasa has planned, they're going to grab a piece of an asteroid, they're going to try to redirect an asteroid. a big part of those missions is understanding the way those bodies interact with the sun as they come closer to it. for example, we know that when these bodies warm up, it changes their trajectory, but we don't know enough to factor that into models. that is why there is often a large margin of error when you're talking about how likely something is to hit earth. it's just understanding how these things are composed, how they came to be, how they act when th