New Delhi, April 3 -- It's like shooting a bullet with another bullet.

Except the two - one the size of a trailer and the other as tall as the Empire State Building - are thousands of miles apart and moving at 7,000 miles an hour.

It's a gamble of millions of dollars and the professional reputation of the Long Beach-based ExLabs that it doesn't miss.

The company, which operates out of a 30,000-square-foot warehouse near Long Beach Airport, is scheduled to design a spacecraft set to be launched in April 2028. Its target: a passing asteroid.

The launch will take place when the asteroid is as close as it will come to Earth - about 32,000 kilometers away - when it dips below satellites and near enough to be seen by the naked eye.

It will...