We reported that NASA is planning to capture asteroid and bring it back to Earth or near Earth. And for this NASA is even seeking help from people to hunt asteroids. Now NASA has confirmed that it has received more than 400 ideas for capturing larger asteroids from potential partners. Seems like NASA is determined to lasso asteroids by hooks or by crooks.
To capture asteroid, NASA will send a robotic spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid, snare it with a “space lasso” and tow it back to a parking orbit near the moon so that it can be explored by astronauts. But NASA plans to send a manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 to capture the asteroid. However, to have the best process of capturing asteroids, last month NASA requested its potential partners to provide ideas for capturing larger asteroids.
On July 26, Friday, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver at the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace conference in San Jose, California, said that NASA has received more than 400 ideas from private companies, non-profit groups and international organizations. Now the space agency has decided to review the submissions over the next month and after that the agency will plan to discuss the most promising ideas in a public workshop in September.
Garver believes capturing asteroid “mission is going to help us protect the planet” and therefore the agency “should consider going to a larger asteroid so we can drive specifically the observations for larger asteroids that are actually threats to us.”
Source: Mother Nature Network
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