There’s a lot of talk about what NASA’s deep space manned missions will look like, and now a news article is giving us a sneak peek ahead of any official announcement: sending a crew of astronauts to land on a nearby asteroid, which would mean boldly going where no human has ever gone before.
While NASA isn’t set to reveal details of a manned asteroid mission until later this month at a conference in Japan, early details a leaking out in a report by Richard Gray for the U.K.’s The Telegraph:
A team of astronauts are being trained to land on an asteroid to explore its surface, search for minerals and even learn the skills they may need to destroy it should one pose a threat to the Earth.
NASA, the U.S. space agency, is planning to send humans far further than they have ever been before to by making contact with an asteroid up to three million miles away by the end of the next decade.
via DVICE
May 15, 2012
