MANNED MISSION TO AN ASTEROID

NASA plans to send manned expeditions to near-Earth asteroids in order to discover more about their formation and structure

Asteroids can tell us a great deal about the formation of our Solar System and could be stepping stones to the long-term colonisation of the Moon and interplanetary trips to Mars and beyond. They might well contain water and air that could be used to support deep-space manned missions, and there’s the possibility of mining them for their precious metals. They certainly have the potential to enhance human existence, yet there are at least 1,000 dangerous asteroids that pose a risk to Earth.

In April 2010, former president Barack Obama announced that NASA should send a manned mission to an asteroid by 2025. Though this target doesn’t look likely, one of NASA’s future plans is to use an unmanned spacecraft to capture a 500-tonne, seven-metre (23foot) diameter asteroid and send it into a high lunar orbit. Here, unmanned spacecraft and manned crews using Orion spacecraft could easily visit and study it in detail. An asteroid capture and return spacecraft would take about four years to reach a suitable asteroid, 90 days to deploy a large capture bag and a further two to six years to take it to the Moon.