Asteroid capture plan faces criticism from asteroid scientists

Science : President Obama’s 2014 budget proposal included $105 million for a robotic spacecraft to capture a small asteroid and move it closer to Earth so that astronauts could visit it. However, the plan is receiving criticism from asteroid researchers, including the head of NASA’s Small Bodies Assessment Group . The plan, based on studies by the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) at Caltech, visualizes capturing the asteroid by 2017 and using an ion drive to push it toward Earth. To be able to do that, some advances in technology will be necessary, including better solar panels and improved ion engines. However, the real problem will be identifying enough suitable candidate asteroids that one will actually be reachable when the spacecraft is finally able to launch. To do that, monitoring capabilities need to be significantly improved so that asteroids’ sizes and shapes, as well as orbital paths and times, can be determined. The claimed benefits of the mission have also been criticized. In particular, in terms of preventing an asteroid from colliding with Earth, none of the target asteroids would be large enough to penetrate Earth’s atmosphere, so the program will likely not be very useful for developing impact prevention policies.