Cosmic crash 2022: Space probes will smash into asteroid in nine years

By Miriam Kramer 

Cosmic crash 2022: American and European scientists are planning to crash a spacecraft into a nearby asteroid in 2022 to analyze the interior of the cosmic rock.

Scientists in Europe and the United States are moving forward with plans to intentionally smash a spacecraft into a huge nearby asteroid in 2022 to see inside the space rock.

Will NASA Announce Plans to Snag an Asteroid and Fly It to Earth?

By Adam Mann

When the Obama administration’s 2014 federal budget gets released in early April, it might include a curious item: a $100 million request for NASA to conduct a mission to capture an asteroid and bring it back to Earth.

This idea comes from an article published March 28 in Aviation Week and Space Technology, which reports on the space industry. The plan would identify a small asteroid, grab it with a robotic spacecraft, and tug it to the vicinity of our planet, perhaps somewhere near the moon. Such a mission was the subject of a two-day meeting of scientists and engineers at Caltech organized by the Keck Institute for Space Studies in 2011.