Scientists track meteorites that are dangerous to Earth
Mone, Gregory. "Rock Hunt." Popular science Sept. 2009: 54-59. Print.

In October of 2008, an asteroid the size of a small car plummeted through Earth’s atmosphere and crashed into the ground in northern Sudan. Scientists had spotted the rock 20 hours earlier, realized that it was headed for Earth, and then decided to attempt to trace its path to see if they could accurately predict the spot where it would land. The scientists at NASA’s NEO (Near Earth Object) program, which has been studying the orbits of large asteroids since 1998, also realized that this would be a good chance to study the composition of the asteroid. The NEO has a software program called sentry that searches for possible asteroid impacts in the future. On the day that the asteroid was sighted, The Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory called the NEO and alerted them that there was going to be a collision. The NEO began collecting data from 26 different observatories around the world and eventually narrowed down the area where the fragments would hit down to a 200 square mile patch of desert. The fragments of the asteroid were exactly where scientists said that they would be. This is important to humanity because it shows that scientists can locate asteroids that have the potential to hit Earth and destroy cities and other places where people can live.