Video: This NASA Scientist Tracks the Dangerous Asteroids in Earth's Orbit

Although it's been the subject of several Hollywood blockbusters, an asteroid colliding with Earth and causing mass devastation is a very real possibility.

Marina Brozovic, a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, hopes to prevent that from happening.

Brozovic and her team are essentially in charge of the "flight control of the solar system," following the orbits of tens of thousands of asteroids that fly around and near the Earth.

A 1994 Congressional mandate called for NASA to discover all near-Earth asteroids greater than 1 kilometer. Currently, NASA is roughly aware of 95 percent of them, according to the space agency.

"That is not going to be enough," Brozovic said.

Smaller asteroids, of only 50 meters, could still destroy a city.

Thanks to Brozovic and her colleagues, however, keeping a watchful eye on the orbits of the asteroids can give us a few years to prepare for the impact.

"There were impacts in the past; there will definitely be impacts in the future," Brozovic said. "The question is when? And will we be ready?"

To learn more, watch the video below from Wired: