Nasa plans to capture asteroid and put man there

Nasa administrator Charles Bolden Jr on Tuesday said efforts are on to capture and redirect an asteroid closer to earth for astronauts to visit the celestial body to study these further.

In a talk on ‘Nasa’s Space Program’ delivered at the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro’s) Space Application Centre (SAC) auditorium, in Ahmedabad — and transmitted to all ISRO centres across the country — Bolden said the new asteroid initiative would include work to identify and characterise asteroids of all types and then carry out a mission to capture and redirect an asteroid into an orbit close to the Earth so that astronauts can visit it.

Nasa’s 2014 budget proposal includes a plan to robotically capture a small near-Earth asteroid and redirect it safely to a stable orbit in the Earth-Moon system where astronauts can visit and explore it.

According to Nasa plans on its website which elaborate Bolden’s address, the initiative will use current and developing capabilities to find both large asteroids that pose a hazard to the Earth and small asteroids that could be candidates for the initiative. This will accelerate Nasa’s technology development activities in high-powered solar electric propulsion and take advantage of its work on the space launch system rocket and Orion spacecraft, helping to keep Nasa on target to reach US President Barack Obama’s goal of sending humans to the Mars in the 2030s.

This is the first visit by Bolden to any Isro centre after he took over as Nasa Administrator in July 2009. Bolden is only the third Nasa chief to visit the Isro in the past four decades.