Looking toward a manned asteroid mission... and beyond

[j d worthington]

This sounds an ambitious, but very worthy, program, with several applications:

Orion Hardware Reviewed For Human Asteroid Flight - Yahoo! News

And, in case the link, etc., the title is: "Orion Hardware Reviewed For Human Asteroid Flight", the writer is Leonard David; dateline: Wednesday, Dec. 27; and it's from SPACE.com:

Progress is being made on defining a human mission to an asteroid. Experts at several NASA centers are sketching out a prospective piloted stopover at an asteroid--a trek that could return samples from a targeted space rock as well as honing astronaut proficiency and test needed equipment for other space destinations.

At the heart of such a mission is drawing upon the technology of NASA's
Constellation initiative--the overarching program that is gearing up to extend human presence at the Moon, on Mars and beyond. One key ingredient is the Orion spacecraft--a post-Space Shuttle vehicle now under design to thrust crews further than low Earth orbit.

Meanwhile, NASA is wrapping up a report required by the U.S. Congress on how best to search for, catalog and even deal with the hazard of Earth-bruising rocks from space. That space agency report is to be turned over to Congress by year's end.

If lawmakers give the green light to a next generation Near Earth Object (NEO) search program, there could be 40 times the current discovery rate of these celestial bodies. By the time a human mission to an asteroid is ready, there's likely to be a healthy list of suitable targets.

There's a lot more to the article, including looking at the asteroids as preparatory for "spreading the seed" of humanity.....