Skip to content

Video: What an Asteroid Retrieval Might Look Like in 20 Years

This video animation gives us a tantalizing glimpse into one proposed method for asteroid retrieval, which would serve as a stepping stone for future missions to asteroids.
Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

If Barack Obama gets his way, NASA will send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, with the hope of capturing it.

So how exactly would that work? 

Earlier this year the space agency solicited proposals and received over 400 responses. Many of these proposals were scheduled to be discussed this week at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, but due to the government shutdown, that workshop was abruptly canceled. 

Nonetheless, the video animation below gives us a tantalizing glimpse into one proposed method for asteroid retrieval, which would serve as a stepping stone for future missions to asteroids. A small near-Earth asteroid would be robotically captured and bring it into a stable lunar orbit. The asteroid would then be explored by human astronauts. 

Watch here:

Content not available
Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.
Related
A bearded man wearing glasses and a plaid shirt speaks with a microphone clipped to his collar in front of a purple background with white dots.
The Well
How Rainn Wilson discovered sacredness
The hospital where Rainn Wilson’s wife and son nearly died became his own personal holy site. There, he discovered that the sacred can exist in places we least expect it. During his talk at A Night of Awe and Wonder, he explained how the awe we feel in moments of courage and love is moral beauty — and following it might be the start of our spiritual revolution.
▸
13 min
—
with
Rainn Wilson
Up Next