This is something that could be straight out of a sci-fi disaster flick like Armageddon. NASA has announced it will launch a mission to pluck a large boulder off an asteroid and sling it around the moon, becoming an ad hoc destination to prepare for future human missions to Mars.
To accomplish this, an unmanned spacecraft will fly to a nearby asteroid, deploy a robotic arm to take a boulder from its surface, and then make a multi-year journey to put the boulder in orbit around the moon, the agency said. The craft will use solar electric propulsion for the mission that will test numerous new space navigation techniques, NASA said. Once the boulder is in orbit, NASA plans to send two astronauts in its Orion spacecraft on a 25-day mission to rendezvous with the unmanned vehicle and study the boulder.
One secondary mission for the probe is to test how it could be used to push an asteroid off its intended trajectory, giving scientists some ideas about how they could handle an asteroid if it was on a collision course with Earth — but on a very small scale.
The mission, which will cost up to $1.25 billion, is slated to launch in December 2020. It will take about two years to reach the asteroid (the most likely candidate is a quarter-mile-wide rock called 2008 EV5). The spacecraft will spend up to 400 days there, looking for a good boulder. After picking one—maybe around 13 feet in diameter—it will bring the rock over to the moon. In 2025, astronauts will fly NASA’s still-to-be-built Orion to dock with the asteroid-carrying spacecraft and study the rock up close.
The agency hopes to get $US50 million for the ARM project in its 2016 budget.
No word on whether Armageddon connoisseurs can apply, though.