35 Quotes by Carrie Nugent

Asteroids are our oldest and most numerous cosmic neighbors.

I think that, a lot of times, people have this idea that the solar system is entirely explored, that we have sent spacecraft to every planet, we've taken beautiful pictures of everything, and that it's kind of done.

NEOWISE has two goals: One is to characterize asteroids, figure out how big and how bright they are, really basic information about these bodies; and we also find asteroids.

We've actually named asteroids for other famous women in history, like Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth. But it's really this Malala one that's catching people's attention.

If I go and buy a coffee, and somebody asks me what I do, I'll say, 'I find asteroids.' And the first thing they always do is make a Bruce Willis joke, or they are going to bring up Armageddon.

Certainly what happened to the dinosaurs was not good - that was a terrible day for the dinosaurs, very sad. But I have to say, there are a lot of threats we face as people and, as someone who lives in Los Angeles, I'm personally more likely to die from driving on the freeway than I am from an asteroid, so you have to put that risk in perspective.

An asteroid impact in the worst case scenario is a terrifying thing. It seems very uncontrollable: in popular culture, it's often a metaphor for human powerlessness over the world.

It has only been within my lifetime that asteroids have been considered a credible threat to our planet. And since then, there's been a focused effort underway to discover and catalog these objects. I am lucky enough to be part of this effort. I'm part of a team of scientists that use NASA's NEOWISE telescope.

Astronomers are using every technique at their disposal to discover and study asteroids.