NASA's Garver Floats Idea of Capturing Larger Asteroid

摘要

One way to expand public and congressional support for NASA's proposed Asteroid Redirect Mission would be to target a larger asteroid than previously proposed, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said July 26. Speaking at the Space Frontier Foundation's NewSpace conference in San Jose, Calif., Garver said growing public, congressional and private sector interest in identifying asteroids that pose a threat to human populations could provide the impetus for NASA to send astronauts to land on and carve off a piece of a large asteroid near Earth. Garver declined to comment on the size of the proposed asteroid destination.