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TagsBY BOB HOLT
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
A $100 million plan by NASA involving a 25-foot wide, 500-ton asteroid is expected to be part of President Obama’s upcoming federal budget.
NASA is developing a robotic spaceship that would drag the asteroid toward earth for future space exploration purposes.
"This is part of what will be a much broader program," Senator Bill Nelson said, according to space.com. "The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars."
The New York Daily News reports that the robotic spaceship would capture the asteroid and bring it toward earth in 2019, then astronauts would be launched to the asteroid in 2021 through the use of NASA's Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket.
The Keck Institute for Space Studies first presented the plan last year. Their study said that putting the asteroid in lunar orbit “would provide a new capability for human exploration not seen since Apollo,” according to Mail Online. “It would be mankind’s first attempt at modifying the heavens to enable the permanent settlement of humans in space.”
But the overall price Keck put on the mission was $2.6 billion.
According to an Associated Press report on Yahoo! News, NASA's chief technology officer Robert Braun said the robotic craft being employed would need a state-of-the-art solar engine to drag the rock through space, “something that is both cutting-edge and doable.” The asteroid would have no gravity, so the astronauts would hover over it.
Nelson said the mission would help NASA learn how to move away any dangerous asteroids near Earth in the future. A larger one injured people in Russia in February.
The Obama administration has set a goal of sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025.
I am greatly disturbed by your headline and the following quote, ostensibly from the Keck Institute for Space Studies. You quoted, “It would be mankind’s first attempt at modifying the heavens to enable the permanent settlement of humans in space.” Was this comment uttered by a spokesperson for the Keck Institute for Space Studies? If so, please attribute! It implies that the "heavens" would need to be modified to enable the settlement of humans in space. I know that, colloquially, space is sometimes referred to as " the heavens" by people outside the scientific community, but I take umbrage to the use of this term in a scientific endeavor. If someone at the Keck Institute said this, I want to know who it was. I can just see it now... Christians running around in panic because NASA is trying to unlock the "Pearly Gates" so it can get in and make changes that will allow any human to get into "the heavens".