By looking through the catalog of known asteroids, aerospace engineers have identified 12 candidates that we could reach out and capture using existing rocket technology.
Long overlooked as mere rocky chunks leftover from the formation of the solar system, asteroids have recently gotten a lot more scrutiny. A couple years ago, researchers outlined a seemingly daring planto lasso and bring an asteroid back to Earth. NASA doesn’t seem to think this is too crazy, and is moving forward with plans to capture, tow, and place a small asteroid somewhere near our planet. There are also two different private space companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, with plans to seek out and mine precious metals and water from near-Earth asteroids. And finally, the widely filmed Chelyabinsk meteor, which exploded over Russia in February, has focused international attention on the fact that we may one day want to deflect a potentially catastrophic Earth-asteroid crash.
via Wired
Image: D. García Yárnoz, J. P. Sanchez, C. R. McInnes, “Easily retrievable objects among the NEO population,” Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, DOI: 10.1007/s10569-013-9495-6
