NASA Asteroid Capture Mission Approved for 2019, Says Senator

It might sound like the plot to a Michael Bay movie, but science fiction is about to become reality. NASA's ambitious mission to snag an asteroid and bring it into near-Earth orbit for exploration will soon be confirmed for launch in 2019, a senator said Friday.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said President Barack Obama will soon sign off on NASA's bold $100 million proposal in its 2014 budget to capture an asteroid with a robotic spaceship, steer it closer to Earth for research, mine the cosmic rock for resources, and more.

"This is part of what will be a much broader program," explained Nelson, chairman of the Senate science and space subcommittee, at a press conference in Orlando. "The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars."

"It really is a clever concept," Nelson added. "Go find your ideal candidate for an asteroid. Go get it robotically and bring it back."

The grand plan was first advanced by a study conducted last year by the Keck Institute for Space Studies at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The Keck plan proposed snagging a 500-ton, 25-foot-wide near-Earth asteroid and positioning it in "high lunar orbit" by 2025 - the same year President Obama set as the deadline for a manned NASA mission to an asteroid. Sen. Nelson said the newly revised version of NASA's proposal speeds up that time table, using an Orion space capsule to transport about four astronauts to the asteroid by 2021 for spacewalking research.

NASA thinks 25-feet should be just the right size for study. The size of the asteroid would be smaller than the size of the rock that screamed through the sky and slammed into a lake in Russia earlier in the year, according to Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart.

With an overall cost of $2.6 billion, the first approved funds of $100 million would be used to find just the right asteroid to lug closer to Earth, Nelson said.

NASA says the 2021 mission would examine the feasibility and financial value of extracting resources such as water and fuel from asteroids, something the agency hopes would lead to establishing in-space refueling for spacecraft and could create an "off-Earth source of radiation shielding."

"Extraction of propellants, bulk shielding and life support fluids from this first captured asteroid could jump-start an entire space-based industry," the Keck team wrote. "Our space capabilities would finally have caught up with the speculative attractions of using space resources in situ."

Scientists believe the potential benefits of the mission are auspicious enough to convince even the most jaded cynics of space exploration.

"Placing a NEA in lunar orbit would provide a new capability for human exploration not seen since Apollo," the researchers wrote. "Such an achievement has the potential to inspire a nation. It would be mankind's first attempt at modifying the heavens to enable the permanent settlement of humans in space."