The Discovery Enterprise: Animation of NASA's Proposed Asteroid Retrieval Mission

The Discovery Enterprise: Animation of NASA's Proposed Asteroid Retrieval
Mission

NASA's 2014 budget proposes a mission to robotically capture a small Near
Earth Asteroid and then bringing it into a stable lunar orbit where
astronauts can visit and explore it, and where it will be a 'stepping stone'
to future missions to farther asteroids and beyond.

In the wake of the meteorite explosion over Russia's city of Chelyabinsk on
February 15, 2013 NASA's recent budget request calls for the funds to
develop the dual use technologies necessary for planetary defence and
utilising the mineral wealth of the asteroids as outlined by NASA's Keck
Institute for Space Studies proposal which was published earlier this year.

This mission will be a decisive leap towards transforming our species into a
spacefaring civilization finally poised to colonize the solar system and
will also be a fitting tribute to memory of three great space visionaries
who foresaw the coming era of space industrialization and colonization -
Dandridge MacFarlan Cole, G. Harry Stine author of The Third Industrial
Revolution, and Gerald K. O'Neil.

http://www.discovery-enterprise.com/2013/04/animation-of-nasas-proposed-aste
roid.html