There’s nothing like a Buick-sized asteroid hurtling straight towards earth to make you wonder about the robustness of your mitigation and planning efforts have been. Earlier this month, scientists had a unique opportunity to mull that very scenario when an automobile-sized meteoroid dubbed 2008 TC3 exploded in the atmosphere over Sudan.

The meteoroid, which exploded October 7 with an impact equivalent of one to two kilotons of TNT, was discovered October 6 by astronomers using Arizona’s Mt. Lemmon telescope, according to Spaceweather. The sighting was part of a routine NASA-funded search for near-Earth objects at the Catalina Sky Survey projects. It is thought to be the first time an asteroid of its size has ever been discovered before it hit, the website stated.

The fact that the meteoroid was found and tracked before impact is a baby step in the direction of what a group of former NASA astronauts and other scientists have been seeking for years—a plan to mitigate a possible collision of Earth and a really big space rock.

The B612 Foundation (named after the asteroid in Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince) was established in 2002, aims to “significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015.” Proponents of one of the more distinctive hazard mitigation proposals, the Foundation is interested in learning exactly what that would take before the planet is faced with a bigger, deadlier version of 2008 TC3.

In September, the Foundation released promising results from an independent evaluation of a gravity tractor’s ability to determine the orbit of and tow an asteroid. Read the full report and learn more at the Foundation website.