NASA's Plan to Redirect Dangerous Asteroids from Earth (VIDEO)

First Posted: Oct 07, 2015 06:59 AM EDT

Asteroids may be helping NASA man a mission to Mars. Scientists are planning on redirecting an asteroid near the moon in the 2020s in order to find out how best to deflect asteroids that may impede a course to the Red Planet in the 2030s.

NASA has already identified multiple candidate asteroids from the mission. However, the agency continues the search for one that can actually be redirected to near the moon.

Since the announcement of this mission in 2013, NASA's Near-Earth Object Observation Program has catalogued more than 1,000 new near-Earth asteroids discovered by various search teams. Of those identified so far, four could be good candidates for the new mission. In addition, it's likely that more candidates will be discovered over the next few years.

The mission is called the Asteroid Redirect Mission. In addition to actually capturing an asteroid, the mission contains a component that designed to accelerate NASA's efforts to locate potentially hazardous asteroids through non-traditional collaborations and partnerships.

The idea behind the mission is that once a proper candidate is identified, NASA will launch the ARM robotic spacecraft. This robotic spacecraft will capture a boulder off of a large asteroid using a robotic arm. After an asteroid mass is collected, the spacecraft will then redirect it to a stable orbit around the moon.

The mission will also demonstrate planetary defense techniques to deflect dangerous asteroids and protect Earth if needed in the future. In theory, NASA will be able to send out the spacecraft to redirect an asteroid mass to a distant retrograde orbit so that it will not hit Earth.