The head of Russia's federal space agency has said it will work to divert an asteroid which will make several passes near the Earth from 2029. Mr. Anatoly Perminov said the space agency's science council would hold a closed meeting to discuss the issue. He said any eventual plan is likely to be an international collaboration. The US space agency said in October that there is a one-in-250,000 chance of Apophis hitting Earth in 2036. That announcement was a significant reduction in the probability of an impact, based on previous calculations that put the chances at about one-in-45,000. The asteroid is estimated to pass within about 30,000 kilometers of the Earth in 2029.