Important Internet space update: In the event of a government shutdown, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Near Earth Object Office will not be warning the public about "potentially hazardous" asteroids and comets that could approach Earth via Twitter.
But we only discovered that asteroid around a year before it flew past us and we didn't really have a Bruce Willis type plan to deal with it if it had set its sights on Earth. Ed Lu, a former astronaut and head of a nonprofit dedicated to protecting humanity from asteroids, told NPR at the time that "[t]here's no way we could have stopped this," adding that there's "[n]othing we could have done" except maybe to evacuate the area.
Aren't you comforted by the fact that 97 percent of NASA is currently furloughed now?