NASA trains astronauts for asteroid mission

19 May, Daily Telegraph

The first official British European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake is being trained for a mission to land on an asteroid, it can be revealed.It is a space mission straight from the Hollywood film Armageddon.A team of astronauts are being trained to land on an asteroid to explore its surface, search for minerals and even learn the skills they may need to destroy it should one pose a threat to the Earth.

Nasa, the US space agency, is planning to send humans far further than they have ever been before to by making contact with an asteroid up to three million miles away by the end of the next decade.

It would take astronauts far beyond the current limit of human endeavour - the Moon, which is 239,000 miles from Earth.

Travelling at around 50,000 miles per hour around the Sun with almost non-existent gravity due to their small size, landing safely on these space rocks will present a significant challenge.

A team of astronauts, however, have already started preparing for just such a mission. Among them is Major Tim Peake, a former British Army helicopter test pilot who is now the first official British astronaut with the European Space Agency.

Next month they will begin a training programme that will teach them how to operate vehicles, conduct spacewalks and gather samples on the surface of an asteroid.

While the primary goal of a mission to an asteroid will be scientific to learn more about their hostile environments, the skills needed to work on their surface could also prove invaluable should scientists discover one on a collision course with Earth.

Nasa is currently monitoring more than 400 objects with potential to hit the Earth, although most are considered to be low risk.

Major Peake said: "With the technology we have available and are developing today, an asteroid mission of up to a year is definitely achievable."Asteroids are interesting on a number of different levels. Nasa is focused on the science you can achieve as asteroids are essentially a historical record of billions of years of our universe where we can take samples from. "These objects are also coming extremely close to Earth all the time, but we rarely hear about it. In the last year we had an asteroid come within Earth's geostationary orbit, which is closer than some satellites.

"With enough warning we would probably send a robotic mission to deflect an asteroid, but if something is spotted late and is big enough we might come into Armageddon type scenarios where we may have to look at manned missions to deflect it."That is when the skills we are learning about how to work on an asteroid could be useful.