An April 5, 2013 story in the Associated Press reports that Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, the chairman of the Senate science and space subcommittee, has confirmed that NASA will ask for a $100 million down payment on a mission that will capture an asteroid, bring it closer to Earth, and visit it with astronauts. The senator provided more details for the asteroid capture mission.
A 25 foot, 500 ton asteroid would be captured by a specially designed robot and then placed closer to Earth, in lunar orbit or at the Earth/moon Lagrange Point 2 by 2019. Then a crew of astronauts riding in an Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, launched by a heavy lift Space Launch System rocket, would visit and explore the asteroid at leisure.
Nelson implied that this would fulfill President Obama’s plan to send astronauts to an asteroid. Instead of spending weeks in deep space traveling to an Earth approaching asteroid, the astronauts would take a trip of just a few days. It would be done at a fraction of the cost of the original mission plan and would be done four years earlier than the planned 2025 date,
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