NASA Reveals What a Captured Asteroid Could Look Like
- 11 years ago
NASA has released an artist rendition of what an asteroid would look like during its capture.
Ever wonder what an asteroid looks like up close? Well NASA has released an artist rendition of what an asteroid would look like during its capture.
As part of the budget proposal for the 2014 fiscal year, NASA authorities are planning to capture a small asteroid near Earth using a robot. They want to safely move the caught asteroid to a stable orbit in a place where astronauts can visit it and conduct experiments.
The image is basically a preliminary optical hypothesis of how that scenario would potentially unfold from a visual standpoint. According to NASA, the planned mission would use “current and developing capabilities to find both large asteroids that pose a hazard to Earth and small asteroids that could be candidates for the initiative.”
While its hard to know the exact number of asteroids in our solar system, its estimated that there are more than 150 million of them measuring over 100 meters long. However, the chances of a massive asteroid striking Earth are said to be about one in 20,000.
Ever wonder what an asteroid looks like up close? Well NASA has released an artist rendition of what an asteroid would look like during its capture.
As part of the budget proposal for the 2014 fiscal year, NASA authorities are planning to capture a small asteroid near Earth using a robot. They want to safely move the caught asteroid to a stable orbit in a place where astronauts can visit it and conduct experiments.
The image is basically a preliminary optical hypothesis of how that scenario would potentially unfold from a visual standpoint. According to NASA, the planned mission would use “current and developing capabilities to find both large asteroids that pose a hazard to Earth and small asteroids that could be candidates for the initiative.”
While its hard to know the exact number of asteroids in our solar system, its estimated that there are more than 150 million of them measuring over 100 meters long. However, the chances of a massive asteroid striking Earth are said to be about one in 20,000.