HOUSTON – With the space shuttle now history, NASA’s next great mission is so audacious, the agency’s best minds are wrestling with how to pull it off: Send astronauts to an asteroid in less than 15 years.
The challenges are innumerable. Some old-timers are grousing about it, saying going back to the moon makes more sense. But many NASA brains are thrilled to have such an improbable assignment.
And NASA leaders say civilization may depend on it.
An asteroid is a giant space rock that orbits the sun, like Earth. And someday one might threaten the planet.
But sending people to one won’t be easy. You can’t land on an asteroid because you’d bounce off — it has virtually no gravity. Reaching it might require a NASA spacecraft to harpoon it. Heck, astronauts couldn’t even walk on it because they’d float away.
NASA is thinking about jetpacks, tethers, bungees, nets and spiderwebs to allow explorers to float just above the surface of it while attached to a smaller mini-spaceship.
Such a ship — something like a “Star Trek” shuttlecraft melded with a deep sea explorer with pincer-like arms_ is needed just to get within working distance of the rock. That craft would have to be big
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