Quotes from Carrie Nugent

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.

There are all these interesting rules about asteroid nomenclature. Once you discover it, you have the right to name it, but there's a catch.

I love studying asteroids because they are relatively simple, just rocks in space. They can be understood with physics and described with elegant equations. For the most part, they are serene celestial bodies.

People have discovered asteroids in the Main Belt that outgas like comets, and things on cometary orbits that no longer outgas - that don't have tails. We're finding all of these unique cases.

I think the public perception about asteroids is that they're kind of metaphors for acts of God, the fact that we have no control over the universe. They're always seen as these uncontrollable events. But when you look at the science, they're actually the exact opposite.

Asteroids are our oldest and most numerous cosmic neighbors.

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

Most astronomical work has to do with things that are very, very far away and don't affect our lives very much.

Changing the asteroid's velocity changes the time when the asteroid crosses Earth's orbit. After all, just because it crosses Earth's path doesn't mean there is necessarily going to be a collision. It has to cross Earth's path when the Earth is right there.

The best thing to do is to study these asteroids so we know the range of parameters we would have to deal with and also to find them so we have as much time as possible to prepare.

When I tell people I'm a space scientist studying asteroids, they sometimes assume I'm a super-smart math whiz. The kind of person who skipped a bunch of grades and went to college when they were sixteen. Although I am good at math, school was difficult for me, and I didn't get straight A's.