Senator Clarence William Nelson, former astronaut (Colombia) made a statement on Friday that NASA getting ready for 2019 “lasso an asteroid” with a diameter of 7.6 m and deliver it to the lunar orbit. A statement, note made on NASA’s long-standing interest in such a project, but before lately nobody knew how divided the idea is US leadership.
The negotiations did seem to succeed: Mr. Nelson reported that $ 100 million has already been planned by President Obama for 2014 budgeting. Presiding senator Subcommittee on Science and Space, depicts the case regarding simple: “Find the perfect candidate for asteroids. And pull it up closer with a robotic ship … ” 
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An object larger than 7.6 meters will be difficult to transport thus. By the way, the cost of transporting an asteroid to the moon, estimated to be comparable to sending Curiosity. (Here and below NASA illustrations.)
So far (until 2014) we are only talking about finding “suitable candidate for asteroids. “However, the body with a diameter of 7.6 m, in general saying not an asteroid. Everything that is less than 10 m is usually attributed to meteoroids, best known to you for the fact that “jerked” recently over Chelyabinsk. No, of course, the definition of a meteoroid is also indisputable: say, the British Royal Astronomical society considers bodies less than 10 m as such, and other definitions they say about 30 m, but an object at 7.5 m can only be called an asteroid for the sake of … positioning the project correctly in the US Congress. It, agree, it sounds much more impressive than the word with the root “meteo”, and among the public, the term “meteoroid” on average causes no more understanding than the word “sepulka”. All in all, the ideal mission goal NASA is this: a body that is 10 meters smaller than the Chelyabinsk meteoroid across, having a mass of 450 tons (total), i.e. Twenty times smaller than Chelyabinsk / Chebarkul. And yet it is very An ambitious project! Already by 2021, the senator claims, the Americans will land on an asteroid fitted to the lunar orbit, and therefore achieved the largest success manned astronautics after landing on the moon. Recall: some time ago Mr. Obama rejected plans to re-expedition to the moon, reasonably noticing that the star-striped flag is already there, but just like that repeat the mission does not make sense. Beating the concept of the lunar base, NASA with hardly admitted to herself that this requires more money than in In the near future, the department will have. 
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By the time something like this is pulled up to the Earth system – Moon, NASA will be ready and a new launch vehicle (SLS), and a new manned ship (Orion).
In this sense, an asteroid expedition looks like candy: pulling a 7.5-meter object to the moon is cheaper than driving to it manned spacecraft because shift orbit A small meteoroid is pretty simple. As Donald Jomans notes (Donald Yeomans), head of the near-Earth objects program NASA, firstly, such an asteroid (for some reason, he also uses this term) cannot cause significant damage to the Earth (and the truth, until “Chelyabinsk” is too far for him), because even if something doesn’t go so, it just burns in the upper atmosphere. Secondly after detection only need to slow down the rotation of the body and deliver it closer to the Earth – that is, to “attach” to it an apparatus with the solar a battery and an ion engine that will gradually slow down the rotation, and then transfer the body to a lunar orbit. Even in case of departure Democrats from power, their successors are unlikely to freeze program: in terms of its PR-return, the project is so profitable for anyone US President, that outside the default scenario of this country, the refusal “flight to an asteroid” is hard to imagine. Of course in this NASA’s mission will need luck: find the body of the right size in a compressed timing is not easy. Although taking into account the multiplicity of small bodies in This is possible around the Earth. And then the Americans will gain an important victory in the historic race of manned space exploration – first after 1968.
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