When you talk about asteroids, Bruce Willis starrer Armageddon comes to mind.
In the movie, a rogue asteroid is hurtling towards earth and could cause mass human extinction.
Willis and his team successfully drill the same and Willis dies while detonating the nuke.
This scenario though hypothetical, is possible in future.
That is why NASA wants to study asteroids up close.
What better way than to have your own asteroid in your backyard to take samples and conduct experiments.
Thus, NASA plans to redirect an asteroid into our moons orbit by 2020.
Once passed on, astronauts will explore it and return with samples in the 2020s.
Multiple candidate asteroids have been recognized by NASA.
However, its search for the one that could be redirected to near the moon in the 2020s continues.
Four candidates have been found out to be good for ARM so far.
Over the next few years, many more are expected to be discovered by the scientists.
The ARM is one part of NASAs Asteroid Initiative.
The challenge could also help recognize viable candidates for ARM.
NASA plans to launch the ARM robotic spacecraft at the end of this decade.
Using a robotic arm, the spacecraft will seize a boulder off of a large asteroid.
Asteroids are left-over materials from the solar systems formation.
Resource:NASA
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source: www.techworm.net
