Maybe NASA Won't Be Capturing an Asteroid After All

Over the past year PopMech has been covering how NASA might execute one of President Obama's grandest plans: grabbing and asteroid and towing it closer to Earth, perhaps into an orbit around the moon, where astronauts could visit and investigate the big hunk of space rock. Yet, perhaps predictably, the proposal has gotten bogged down in Congress, where big ideas go to die.

The New York Times reports this week that the science committee in the House of Representatives voted down Obama's agenda for NASA in favor of one that calls on the agency to plan a return trip to the moon and start thinking about a future manned voyage to Mars.

The asteroid-snatching plan is not doomed, the Times says. The Senate could pass its version of the NASA bill, which leaves out any mention of the asteroid mission specifically and instead allows NASA to pursue the path it thinks is best for ramping up to an eventual mission to Mars.

Just about everybody?Democrats, Republicans, and NASA?agrees on the end goal of getting humans to the surface of the Red Planet. It's just that they can't agree on the best course. Some in the House decry the President's asteroid plan as an expensive waste of time. The House proposal would charge NASA with duplicating a 44-year-old accomplishment, landing on the moon, though with the goal of setting up some kind of base to boost the agency's ability to operate in space.

The counterpoint: The new analysis by NASA JPL, the folks who put Curiosity on Mars, says the cost of the asteroid-snaring mission could come in at $1 to $2 billion, quite affordable by the standards of big space missions (they did Curiosity for $2.5 billion). Besides boosting NASA's ability to operate beyond Earth orbit, the asteroid capture mission would be humanity's first try at moving an asteroid, something that might come in handy if we ever spot such as object hurtling toward our planet, rendering our political quibbles moot.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/how-to/blog/maybe-nasa-wont-be-capturing-an-asteroid-after-all-15754182?src=rss

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