Awesome Rendered Images for Planned NASA Asteroid Mission Released

NASA released new photos and video animations depicting the agency’s planned mission to find, capture, redirect, and study a near-Earth asteroid.

The images show crew operations including the Orion spacecraft’s trip to and rendezvous with the relocated asteroid, and astronauts maneuvering through a spacewalk to collect samples from the asteroid.

NASA is enhancing its ongoing efforts to identify and characterize near-Earth objects for scientific investigation, and to find potentially hazardous asteroids and targets appropriate for capture.

NASA will use advanced solar electric propulsion technology as a power source for spacecraft.

The agency will host a technical workshop at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 to discuss those responses and the potential for ideas from them to be incorporated into the mission concept. Virtual participation will be available to the public.

NASA’s asteroid initiative will be the agancy's first mission to identify, capture and relocate an asteroid. It will represent an unprecedented technological feat that will lead to new scientific discoveries and technological capabilities that will help protect our home planet.