If you have been paying attention to the news for the past few weeks, you might have heard about a “city-destroying” asteroid – 2024 YR4 – spotted late last year that had the potential to impact Earth in 2032.

While the chances of 2024 YR4 hitting us were once thought to be as high as 3 per cent, they have, fortunately, since been revised down to near zero – but with new asteroids and other objects being spotted all the time, our luck at avoiding the big ones may not hold forever.

Fortunately, the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), comprising astronomers and organisations around the world, is on the case, cataloguing and tracking potentially hazardous asteroids and near-Earth objects to keep the risk of being caught by surprise to a minimum.

Professor Ed Kruzins of UNSW Canberra is one member of the IAWN and he joins the Space Connect Podcast to discuss how asteroids are tracked, what might happen on an impact – and what we could do to prevent one.

This week, ELO2 Consortium beat out rival AROSE to win the right to create Australia’s upcoming lunar rover.

The rover is designed to collect regolith, or moon soil, that will eventually be turned into oxygen to support a permanent NASA base.

It’s arguably the biggest and most exciting project Australia’s space sector has ever been involved with, and will work in tandem with NASA’s Artemis mission to return humans to the lunar surface.

Here, host Adam Thorn interviews two of the key figures at ELO2 overseeing the project: Lunar Outpost’s Joseph Kenrick and EPE Oceania’s Ben Sorensen.

Space Centre Australia plans to build a spaceport in far north Queensland that it hopes will become like an international airport for launch vehicles.

However, unlike its local rivals, it believes it can one day host larger rockets manufactured by companies such as SpaceX.

In this episode, SCA’s founder and CEO, James Palmer, joins host Adam Thorn to talk about the latest developments as well as the appointment of its new chairman, Scott Morrison.

The pair also discuss the latest industry topics, including the high-profile cancelling of the JP 9102 tender with Lockheed Martin.