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

good idea!

In a message dated 4/15/2013 9:18:40 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
sraj99@... writes:

What will be the mass of this rock? Looks quite small.

Should we not be a bit more ambitious and try to put something larger in
Moon orbit, even if the time taken to change the orbit of the Asteroid is
say ten to twenty years.

versy-170800279.html

Regards,
Selvaraj

On 13 April 2013 11:36, Alex Michael Bonnici wrote:

> **
>
> 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