A spacecraft blasts off from Earth, zips by the moon and nine days later rendezvous with an asteroid that has been neatly bagged and placed in a lunar orbit.
Those are just some of the highlights from NASA's new Asteroid Redirect Mission concept video.
The space agency released a video this week depicting how it might get an astronaut within arm's reach of an asteroid, then chip off a few chunks from its surface and bring them home to Earth.
For this concept video to make sense, you have to assume the agency has already snagged an asteroid, enclosed it in what looks like a giant garbage bag and moved it into a stable lunar orbit.
NASA released a concept video about how that might work earlier this year.
In the newly released video we watch two astronauts leave Earth in the Orion spacecraft, travel through space for nine days, and then meet up with the asteroid capture vehicle, carefully docking the two vehicles together.
Using a translation boom (what looks like a long piece of pipe), they move hand over hand from the Orion spacecraft to the asteroid capture vehicle, where the spacewalk tools are stored.
It appears NASA engineers don't expect the astronauts to actually climb aboard the asteroid but rather to just get close enough to grab a few bits of it, double-bag them and then put them in a very important-looking silver suitcase. . . .
Continue Reading . . .
See Also:
NASA Expert Explains How Earth Could Be Saved From Dangerous Asteroids | VIDEO
NASA Maps Dangerous Asteroids That May Threaten Earth
NASA To Snag an Asteroid for use as 'Moon Space Station'
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So, when does NASA and the USA expect to have a space program? Any time soon?
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