People will land on an asteroid before 2020

According to Ciel & Espace magazine, humans will land on one of the asteroids before returning to the Moon or seeking to make a long journey to Mars.

For several months now, the US Space Agency has thought of this slightly frenzied project as bringing people onto one of the myriad meteorites that pass through the Earth, a few million kilometers from us.

This strange mission is likely to be carried out before 2020, the time when the US plans to return to the Moon with the Orion spacecraft and the Ares rocket. The 2-person tour group will collect money stone samples on one of these small bodies to find traces of the formation of the solar system. The first and second round trip will take 3 months, including 1 week on the asteroid.

Paul Abell said: "We can use Ares and Orion spacecraft, remove 2 in 4 seats, thus increasing the amount of food, water and oxygen needed for the trip. Mission can be real. If by now the Atlas 5 missile is available by 2020, of course it is not allowed to postpone the Constellation Lunar exploration program given four years ago by President Bush and considered by NASA as a priority. Top."

However, the first thing is to choose the right target. Must find an Earth-like asteroid, which has a circular orbit around the Sun and is on the same orbit of the Sun. To save fuel, this object is not too far from Earth: the farthest is 7.5 million km. Because there are so many asteroids, its diameter will not exceed 100m, which is the size of a football field.