Superbot

NASA reveals an ambitious plan that involves lassoing an asteroid boulder to save the planet.

17:31 15 November 2016

NASA has revealed its out-of-this-word idea – send a robot into space to capture a boulder from an asteroid’s surface and put it into orbit around the moon. The agency said that this could help them practice how to deflect one for real. The asteroid could also be used as a waystation for any future missions to Mars. 

 

To realise this plan, called Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), a new kind of space robot is now being built by the agency that could be sent off to go asteroid fishing as early as 2021. The project is expected to cost around £1.12 billion

 

NASA's associate administrator Robert Lightfoot said: "Not only is ARM leveraging agency-wide capabilities, it will test a number of new technologies already in development," 

 

Once the boulder has been captured, it will be shifted to the moon where it will be secured by our satellite’s own gravitational pull. When the asteroid is selected, the robotic space ship will be guided towards the surface so the remote pilots can pick the right boulder. 

 

"I'm going to have multiple targets. We can assess which one we want to go after and I then have three to five tries to get it, or I can move on to a different one," Lightfoot said.