The space shuttle program may be dead, but it doesn't seem like NASA is slowing down. The space agency is said to be "mulling over" a proposed mission to send a robotic craft to capture a 1.1 million-pound asteroid and place it in orbit around the Moon, according to a report from New Scientist .
The feasibility of such a mission was exhaustively detailed in a study prepared for the Keck Institute for Space Studies by a group of NASA and university scientists that was published this past April. The study found that it would be feasible to send a automated craft to space on an Atlas V rocket to capture and return a 7 meter-wide (roughly 23 feet) near Earth asteroid at an estimated cost of $2.6 billion — just a bit more than the cost of...
via The Verge - All Posts http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/2/3828862/nasa-mission-to-capture-and-retrieve-asteroid-being-mulled-over
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