This Friday, an asteroid nearly three kilometers wide is going to pass by the Earth-Moon system.

To mark the event, on Friday, May 31st at 2pm EDT, the White House will host the second in a series of “We the Geeks” Google+ Hangouts to talk asteroids with experts, according to a White House annoncement.

The President’s new budget calls for increased efforts by NASA to detect and mitigate potentially hazardous asteroids, and NASA is studying a robotic mission to capture and bring a small asteroid into a stable orbit just beyond the Moon. Those efforts could eventually lead to a crewed mission to rendezvous with and return samples from the redirected asteroid.

Participants in the hangout on the White House Google+ page:

• Lori Garver, Deputy Administrator, NASA
• Bill Nye, Executive Director, Planetary Society
• Ed Lu, former astronaut and CEO, B612 Foundation
• Peter Diamandis, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources
• Jose Luis Galache, Astronomer at the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center

Got questions and comments? Use the hashtag #WeTheGeeks on Twitter and on Google+.