NASA Funds Projects For Asteroid-Capture Plan

Posted by Soulskill on Friday June 20, 2014 @05:06AM from the nasa-in-the-sky-with-diamonds dept.

An anonymous reader writes: NASA has announced funding for 18 different projects aimed at developing an asteroid retrieval mission. "The agency is working on two concepts for the mission. The first concept would fully capture a very small asteroid in free space and the other would retrieve a boulder off of a much larger asteroid. Both concepts would redirect an asteroid mass less than 10 meters in size to orbit the moon. Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft launched on the Space Launch System (SLS) would rendezvous with the captured asteroid mass in lunar orbit and collect samples for return to Earth." Astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope have also identified and measured the size of a candidate near-earth asteroid. It measures roughly six meters in diameter, and seems to be held together lightly, possible as a "pile of rubble."

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Pointless mission by gman003 · 2014-06-20 06:15 · Score: 0, Troll

What, exactly, does this mission get us?
The composition of asteroids is fairly well-known, both from the numerous meteorites we've recovered, and from the numerous spacecraft missions, including a sample return (Hayabusa). Unmanned probes can't do nearly the same scope of exploration as a manned mission, but asteroids are small. Does one even deserve a manned mission, much less several manned missions?
What is there to be gained from an asteroid capture and manned exploration? I'm all for manned exploration, but it seems like Mars or Titan or something might be a better target.