NASA To Launch Mission: Collect And Redirect Asteroid Boulders By 2020

Usually seen outside the Earth, sometimes with the naked eye, asteroids are fascinating entities that NASA is certainly curious about. The organization is currently developing a study where robotic arms can collect and redirect orbits of known asteroids so that scientists can study their nature - and even take samples that can be brought back to earth.

Start of @NASA's #asteroid redirect mission slips several years in new budget proposal https://t.co/RLmq1eyN0W pic.twitter.com/qoPi9yt2J3

— MarkWhittington (@MarkWhittington) March 9, 2016

NASA is now engaged in its first ever robotic mission to visit the near-Earth objects. Called the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), this will use robotic arms to reach boulders from asteroids. According to a report, the ARM will "collect a multi-ton boulder from its surface, and redirect it into a stable orbit around the moon. Once it's there, astronauts will explore it and return with samples in the 2020s"

The ARM is dedicated to advance human missions and spaceflight technology for the Journey to Mars in 2030. For now, there are around a thousand asteroids relatively near Earth that can be part of the ARM project - and the technology is said to advance NASA's human path to the red planet.

In a separate report, NASA added that the ARM will help aid their missions to Mars as their missions can be projected to last for 500 days at a time. "This new technology will help send the large amounts of cargo, habitats and propellant to Mars in advance of a human mission," NASA said.

The technology will help the Orion Spacecraft gather asteroid samples from the redirected boulders to bring them back to earth - being the building blocks of the solar system, scientists believe that they can help understand the composition of the asteroids better with the help of the ARM technology.