Russia wants to

The Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) may join the US Aerospace Agency (NASA) in an effort to kidnap a meteorite.

Vladimir Popovkin, director of Roscosmos, announced the intention of Roscosmos to interview the Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper.

"It was an interesting project and NASA asked Russian experts to participate. We could launch a spacecraft carrying people to asteroids or study it with automatic spacecraft," he said.

Illustration of meteors in Solar System. (Photo: blogspot.com)

The Keck Space Research Institute of the California Institute of Technology in the United States was the first to propose the idea of ​​capturing a 7m long meteorite and a mass of about 500 tons and then dragging it to the moon's high orbit. On the moon's high orbit, the meteorite will become the intermediate station for distant future flights.

Some newspapers reported that NASA would require the US Congress to grant $ 100 million so that they could start implementing the project. According to experts from the Keck Space Research Institute, the total cost for the project is about 2.65 billion USD.

Also during the interview, Mr. Popovkin added that Russia will establish a system to monitor celestial bodies potentially harmful to the planet before 2020.

"We should start thinking about how to deal with the dangers of space like meteorites," he commented.

A large meteorite plunged into central Russia on February 15, causing a loud explosion and injuring more than 1,000 people. After that rare event, Russian and American officials promoted the importance of meteorite defense systems.

"The meteorite threatens the whole earth, not just one country. We can only protect the world if we work together on an international scale. We will fail if each country only try to make that effort separately, " he commented.