Asteroid Redirect Mission – Spaceflight Now

Trump budget blueprint focuses on deep space exploration, commercial partnerships

March 16, 2017 William Harwood

The Trump administration is proposing $19.1 billion for NASA in its fiscal 2018 budget blueprint, a 0.8 percent decrease from 2017 funding levels, focusing on deep space exploration, both human and robotic, and increased public-private partnerships to lower costs and encourage private sector innovation.

NASA turning to U.S. industry to build asteroid redirect craft

October 26, 2015 Stephen Clark

NASA is seeking proposals from U.S. satellite manufacturers interested in building the spacecraft bus for the agency’s initiative to pluck a boulder from an asteroid and drive it into lunar orbit, with plans to select multiple winners for study contracts next year.

NASA opts to grab a boulder, not the whole asteroid

March 25, 2015 William Harwood

After an extended review, NASA has opted to forgo capturing a small asteroid as an interim step on the road to sending astronauts to Mars. Instead, the agency will focus on robotically plucking a sizable boulder from the surface of an asteroid and returning it to the vicinity of the moon for analysis by spacewalking astronauts in the mid 2020s.