Obama Wants To Spend $100 Million To Lasso An Asteroid — Here’s How It Could Actually Work

Dina Spector  Business Insider

There’s been an increased interest in asteroids ever since a meteor exploded in the sky above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February, an event almost immediately followed by the closest known flyby of a football-sized asteroid.

That’s why NASA hopes to invest a significant chunk of federal money into a plan that involves “bagging” a small asteroid and dragging it back into orbit around the moon, later to be visited by astronauts who will bring back samples.

See the plan to lasso an asteroid >

In President Obama’s 2014 budget proposal, unveiled on Wednesday, the space agency called for a spending total of $17.7 billion, with $105 million of that money dedicated to identifying potentially hazardous asteroids, NASA said in a news conference on Wednesday.

Of that, $78 million would go toward the asteroid retrieval initiative.

If successful, this would be the “first-ever mission to identify, capture, and relocate an asteroid,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.

Though wrought with unexpected challenges, the plan to wrangle a fast-rotating space rock actually seems pretty simple on paper.

NASA released an animation of the operation, – go to:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid_initiative.html

To see how NASA hopes it will work go to:

http://www.businessinsider.com/nasas-100-million-asteroid-initiative-2013-4?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+%28Business+Insider%29#the-first-thing-nasa-has-to-do-is-identify-a-suitable-asteroid-target-the-ideal-space-rock-is-one-thats-small-about-25-feet-wide-and-close-to-earth-1

For more on this story go to:

http://www.businessinsider.com/nasas-100-million-asteroid-initiative-2013-4?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+%28Business+Insider%29