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Space? joining us tom jones, a planetary scientist and a former nasa astronaut. tom, you've been working on such a plan talking about it with the united nations. tell us about it. >> well, at the united nations, jon, there is an effort to have international collaboration among the space agencies to share the resources and share information about the detection and warnings of asteroids in the future. with that warning information, the space agencies could collaborate on a deflection mission to ward off a future catastrophic impact. jon: this one we're talking about is called, qe-2. this is not ...

This green spot shows parts of buildings and trees being tossed around. >> we wanted to make sure that we were saying, okay, at this point, a tornado is on the ground, a possibly strong tornado, given this type of debris signature we are seeing. >> reporter: current radar uses horizontal beams to sweep storm clouds, and dual polarization sends horizontal and vertical beams with enhanced images. >> reports from the ground from that site, especially at night or in rural areas, to be able to see that possible debris ball or debris signature from a tornado on the ground gives forecasters increased...

>> reporter: current radar uses horizontal beams to sweep storm clouds. dual polar radar sweeps with horizontal and vertital themes, sending enhanced images. >> absent of spot spotter reports from the ground there that site, especially at night or in rural areas, to be able to see that possible debris ball or signature from a tornado on the ground gives forecasters increased confidence. >> reporter: confidence to trigger alerts sooner with warning information that is more direct. >> so instead of saying, severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado, we can say a tornado is on the ground,...

Source. >> just to be specific, how much time can you actually shave off for people in order to save them time, do you think? >> well, we can take you in a little more time off if we had it very rapidly. we could probably get results out in four minutes if we had optimal -- just the perfect stations in the right spot. >> so if you compare that to the current warnings and how long they take, how significant is your technology? >> so the warning -- the warning information we give is actually more useful for identifying specific earthquakes, and so this gives us better earthquake information rath...