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NASA plan to capture an asteroid

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khaoz
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01 May 2014, 2:27 am

And put in orbit around the moon to practice Mars landings. The vessel used to grab the astroid looks like a folding badmitton birdie.

http://www.space.com/25690-nasa-asteroi ... 0_22954604



Jono
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01 May 2014, 5:14 am

Would it not be easier to just attempt to land on a quasi-satellite asteroid like Cruithne? Sometimes Cruithne is closer to the Earth than the moon and I would of thought that it would of been easier and a lot cheaper to just try and land on that than to attempt to capture an asteroid and put in orbit around the moon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruithne_(asteroid)



GregCav
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01 May 2014, 6:16 am

My piece of crud Windows and Explorer 10 won't let me view that page. Screw you Microsoft.



TallyMan
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01 May 2014, 6:33 am

GregCav wrote:
My piece of crud Windows and Explorer 10 won't let me view that page. Screw you Microsoft.


Why not switch to a better browser such as Firefox? Besides there is currently an unpatched zero day exploit with IE. If you visit the wrong site or get served a malicious advert your computer will be pwned by malware.


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I've left WP indefinitely.


micfranklin
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01 May 2014, 8:40 am

This should be a fun space adventure for our kids to read about.



IamRob
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01 May 2014, 8:50 pm

They dont mention at all how this could help missions to mars.they mention working on sustaining missions with less earth support but what does the asteroid have to do with it.is it a space Tourism thing,a look what we can do thing.is it a sort of conspiracy, an asteroid that could hit earth and to not cause panic they planed a mission to capture it for space advancment purposes.i think there is more to it than they say.what more can we learn from an asteroid orbitin the moon compared to the moon itself



khaoz
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01 May 2014, 8:57 pm

IamRob wrote:
They dont mention at all how this could help missions to mars.they mention working on sustaining missions with less earth support but what does the asteroid have to do with it.is it a space Tourism thing,a look what we can do thing.is it a sort of conspiracy, an asteroid that could hit earth and to not cause panic they planed a mission to capture it for space advancment purposes.i think there is more to it than they say.what more can we learn from an asteroid orbitin the moon compared to the moon itself


From my understanding they plan to put the asteroid in orbit around the moon and use it to practice landings on it with whatever landing craft they have in development, either manned or something like an exploratory rover I think just being capable of grabbing an asteroid and repositioning it would be valuable experience for dealing with any asteroids which may present an imminent threat.



IamRob
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01 May 2014, 9:16 pm

Quote:
From my understanding they plan to put the asteroid in orbit around the moon and use it to practice landings on it with whatever landing craft they have in development, either manned or something like an exploratory rover I think just being capable of grabbing an asteroid and repositioning it would be valuable experience for dealing with any asteroids which may present an imminent threat.


I agree that being able to capture an asteroid and reposition it would be of great value.but isn't the moon a better representation of mars than an asteroid.



micfranklin
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02 May 2014, 7:08 am

As long as those asteroids don't erase a city block or two here, I'm fine with it.



AutisticGuy1981
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02 May 2014, 7:24 am

I vote the worlds billionaires fund this guys idea.... like he tried to get NASA to decades ago.. we could have people living on mars already and have kickstarted the terraforming process which would take around 100 years
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDWvsdEYSqg[/youtube]



ruveyn
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02 May 2014, 8:19 am

AutisticGuy1981 wrote:
I vote the worlds billionaires fund this guys idea.... like he tried to get NASA to decades ago.. we could have people living on mars already and have kickstarted the terraforming process which would take around 100 years


Mars lost its magnetic fields a billion years ago. It cannot be terraformed. The best we can do there is build habitats.