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A Space Rock Hunter Picks Top 10 Asteroid Facts

Don Yeomans, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, hunts for and researches near-Earth objects -- asteroids, comets and other space rocks. Yeomans heads a group charged by NASA to watch for objects whose orbits bring them close to Earth and therefore might one day prove dangerous.

He and his colleagues now run a new Asteroid Watch web site at JPL, where information long confined to data points is now available in a more digestible format along with expert analysis aimed at non-scientists.

Inside, an example of the new, pop-sci approach: Yeomans' 10 favorite facts about asteroids.