The MADMEN: NASA's swarm of asteroid deflecting robots

And speaking of NASA and robots, the agency has contracted SpaceWorks Engineering to investigate  something we thought they should have done ever since Deep Impact and Armaggedon scared the crap out of us a few years back: build a fleet of robots that can destroy any asteroid that's on a collision course with the Earth. Most unreassuringly, they're calling the robots "Modular Asteroid Deflection Mission Ejector Nodes", or MADMEN, and they're supposed to work by chipping away at the asteroid and using the resulting force from the ejection to gradually push the asteroid of the Earth's path.