NASA shuts down asteroid capture mission
Faced with years of congressional disinterest, NASA this week finally decided to close out its asteroid redirect mission.
The project was first pushed by President Obama as a mission to send astronauts to an asteroid. Then they downgraded it to using an unmanned spacecraft to bring a large asteroid back to lunar space, where astronauts would then visit it. Then they downgraded this to bringing back a small asteroid, which was later downgraded to bringing back a small boulder. In the process the manned mission got pushed farther and farther into the future, until it dwindled out of sight.
The mission never had any congressional support, so it was never going to happen. With the end of the Obama administration NASA can now finally stop making believe that it might happen and shut it down.
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Faced with years of congressional disinterest, NASA this week finally decided to close out its asteroid redirect mission.
The project was first pushed by President Obama as a mission to send astronauts to an asteroid. Then they downgraded it to using an unmanned spacecraft to bring a large asteroid back to lunar space, where astronauts would then visit it. Then they downgraded this to bringing back a small asteroid, which was later downgraded to bringing back a small boulder. In the process the manned mission got pushed farther and farther into the future, until it dwindled out of sight.
The mission never had any congressional support, so it was never going to happen. With the end of the Obama administration NASA can now finally stop making believe that it might happen and shut it down.
Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar below. Your support will allow me to continue covering science and culture as I have for the past twenty years, independent and free from any outside influence.
Regular readers can support Behind The Black with a contribution via paypal:
If Paypal doesn't work for you, you can support Behind The Black directly by sending your donation by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman, to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
With the end of the Obama administration NASA can now finally stop making believe that it might happen and shut it down.
Much of the last 8 years for NASA has been make believe. This asteroid mission was the next thing NASA was supposed to do but somehow it got transmogrified into the #JourneyToMars scam to distract from the failure of the rest* of what NASA was doing.
*Obviously NASA has had some successes with various probes and rovers, many of which started before Obama took office. Some of their biggest fails did too.
I just loved the suggestion that the earth already has asteroids on it (by another name) and we could just launch one of those into orbit and visit it!