NASA reveals plan to catch an asteroid

NASA's budget request for the 2014 fiscal year may include plans for an ambitious mission to send a robotic probe into deep space, capture an asteroid and haul it back within the reach of astronaut explorers, according to a press report.

The space agency is apparently including a request for $100 million in its 2014 budget request to help fund the audacious asteroid capture mission, an Aviation Week report said.

The asteroid-retrieval mission was first proposed last year by the Keck Institute for Space Studies at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. That study, released last April, revolved around an Asteroid Capture and Return mission that would snag a 25-foot-wide (7 meters) space rock and place it in high lunar orbit by 2025 — the deadline set by the Obama administration for NASA's human mission to an asteroid.

NASA officials said Friday that they cannot comment on details of the agency's 2014 budget request until the Obama administration unveils the complete federal budget request on April 10.

Scientists who participated in the Keck study spoke before a National Research Council human spaceflight technical feasibility panel on March 28, describing the target as asteroid as essential "dried mudball" rather than a threatening space rock, Morring wrote.
The Keck study released last year cited a near-Earth asteroid capture mission as a potential gateway to manned Mars exploration.