Obama's 2014 budget for Nasa asked for $100-million for the asteroid project, but the overall costs may be as high as $2-billion.
“It's a little different way than just a date and a destination. We are really good at just picking dates and destinations. But that's really hard in this budget environment where things are constrained and we have flat budgets, et cetera et cetera, to pull that off,†said Gerstenmaier.
“It is not just a one-time thing. It actually feeds forward into the broader context of what we want to do with humans in space.â€
The launch could happen as early as 2017 or as late as 2019.
After launch of the robotic mission, the journey to the asteroid would take a year and a half, and the act of towing it toward the moon could take another three and a half years, Nasa said.
The project would use a new fuel technology called solar electric propulsion.
“We are talking about engineering the solar system, in a way. We are talking about taking an asteroid which was once here, and then putting it into a useful orbit for our purposes,†said Chodas.
“This is a very large idea here that we are talking about and I think it will reinvigorate interest in the space program,†he said. - Sapa-AFP
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