NASA Mission to Bag Asteroid Confirmed by Obama Administration
Posted on April 6, 2013
NBC News reports that NASA's plans to grab an asteroid and move it closer to Earth have been confirmed. The Obama administration wants to budget $100 million to snag an asteroid using a robotic probe. The mission would involve moving a 500 ton, 7-to-10 meter wide asteroid closer to the Earth where astronauts could then more easily visit it and grab samples. The image above shows what a spacecraft about to capture an asteroid might look like.
NBC News says the plan is for the asteroid grab to occur within the next ten years. After the asteroid mission NASA would then focus on a manned Mars mission. In the asteroid retrieval mission, a specially designed NASA probe would capture a 500 ton asteroid and bring it into a stable orbit so astronauts could study it and take pieces of it back to Earth. The plans are based on the Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study conducted by the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) in April, 2012.