3 Questions: Richard Binzel on NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission
By the end of this decade, NASA hopes to lasso a space rock: The space agency is actively pursuing proposals for its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) — a mission that aims to identify, capture, and redirect an asteroid into lunar orbit. Astronauts might then visit the rock to collect and bring back samples — pieces that would presumably hold remnants of the early solar system. ARM has been touted as a steppingstone toward the ultimate goal of sending humans to Mars: The mission would advance technologies and spaceflight experience needed for humans to colonize the Red Planet. However, ARM may be a misstep for NASA, according to Richard Binzel, an MIT professor of planetary sciences. In a commentary published today in the journal Nature, Binzel argues that capturing a faraway asteroid is unnecessary and wasteful. Instead, he says, a trove of near-Earth asteroids, in native orbits as close as the moon,...