NASA plans 2025 manned mission to asteroid..Russian scientists say asteroid on collision course with Earth

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/25/nasa-plans-2025-manned-mission-to-asteroid/

It’s a little soon for astronauts to suit up, but NASA is planning to send a manned mission to an asteroid in 2025.

In keeping with President Barack Obama’s 2010 vision, the space agency has shifted its sights from returning to the moon and, instead, is aiming for a smaller — and possibly more dangerous — rock in space, Space.com reports.

“By 2025, we expect a new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the moon into deep space,” Obama said last year at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“So we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth, and a landing on Mars will follow.”

At least the first asteroid-bound trip won’t follow the script of the 1998 sci-fi adventure “Armageddon.” In that scenario, a deep core drilling team, led by Bruce Willis, is sent to a huge asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Their mission: to nuke it before it arrives and causes chaos to our home planet.

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/02/10/russian-scientists-say-asteroid-on-collision-course-with-earth/?icid=sphere_aolnews2

Not to alarm you, but Russian scientists estimate Earth will be hit by an asteroid on April 13, 2036. Should we start packing our bags now? And where would we go?

In 2004, NASA suggested the possibility that the asteroid called Apophis, bigger than two football fields, might collide with our planet in 2029. Further computations changed their minds about that prediction.

And now, Russian figures give us a new date for a possible encounter with the giant rock from space.

“Technically, they’re correct — there is a chance in 2036″ that Apophis will hit Earth, Donald Yeomans, head of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program, told the Life’s Little Mysteries website.

But Yeomans added that the odds of this happening are only 1 in 250,000.

Last month, Leonid Sokolov of Russia’s St. Petersburg State University announced that “Apophis will approach Earth at a distance of 37,000 to 38,000 kilometers on April 13, 2029. Its likely collision with Earth may occur on April 13, 2036.”

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the russian story came out first..then a few months later the mission is announced..are they connected? maybe they are..fwiw..i give them zero chance of landing on an asteroid and of getting to mars..just wont happen..but it will certainly provide lots of black money for nasa to spread around..

401

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~ by seeker401 on March 31, 2011.