The back story to this is funny! We had been rehearsing the broadcast for a week and every night it had been cloudy in Samford, and the Perth team had all sorts of technical issues that had them scratching their collective heads. So on the eve of the broadcast, and shortly after the Chelyabinsk meteorite smashed to Earth, NASA had seen nothing!

It was cloudy on the night too, but ever optimistic, I pointed the scope to where the scope would be if the clouds would part. And at around 10:30, the clouds did part sufficiently to locate and record the first ever video footage of 2012 DA14 coming towards us! It was a massive relief to everybody and NASA took the footage and went global with it – even if the rock were not seen again from Oz, we had enough to make a show!

Of course, the night came good, but up to that point the tension was unbelievable…