Visits to Asteroids
NASA’s Constellation Program — including the deployment of the Orion crew vehicle replacing the space shuttle — will first be assigned to international space station flights, then propel humans and cargo to the Moon. Expeditionary missions to Mars and beyond will follow.
But there’s ongoing discussion of mounting a piloted mission to an asteroid — a voyage by astronauts to a near-Earth object. These proponents feel certain of the scientific payoff from reaching, first-hand, an asteroid — perhaps even becoming able to exploit these chunks of celestial flotsam to further humankind’s plunge into the cosmos. Read more
