THE next American astronauts to travel beyond the International Space Station won鈥檛 want to take any giant leaps. NASA鈥檚 next stop will probably be an asteroid, where explorers would have to be careful not to drift into space.
Long-awaited details of the White House鈥檚 plan for the space agency emerged last week in a speech by President Barack Obama. A new spacecraft will be ready by 2025 to carry astronauts into deep space, beginning with a trip to an asteroid, he said.
Travelling to an asteroid will not be easy. Astronauts will be exposed to higher levels of radiation, and will have to find a way to attach themselves to the asteroid鈥檚 surface to cope with its weak gravity.
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But the pay-off for planetary defence could be big. One future mission might be to nudge an asteroid from its original orbit. That 鈥渨ould demonstrate once and for all that we鈥檙e smarter than the dinosaurs and could therefore avoid what they didn鈥檛鈥�, White House science adviser John Holdren said in a discussion after the speech.
