NASA unveiled a $17.7 billion
spending plan for 2014 today that
continues major ongoing space
exploration projects, while including
funds to kick-start an audacious new
mission to capture a small asteroid
and park it near the moon so
astronauts can explore it by 2025.
The proposed NASA budget is part of
President Barack Obama's 2014
federal budget request and would
restore the U.S. space agency's
funding back near its 2013 levels. The
request is about $50 million less than
NASA's 2013 budget but would
restore deep cuts from sequestration,
leaving the agency with a roughly $1
billion increase from the $16.6 billion
budget actually received for 2013.
NASA's plan to send a robotic
spacecraft to lasso an asteroid and
tow it to the moon is a stand-out item
in the 2014 budget request. The goal
is to capture an asteroid and bring it
closer to Earth so that a manned
mission can explore the space rock by
2025 — a major U.S. spaceflight goal
set by Obama in 2010.
SEE ALSO: NASA's 2014 Budget
Explained in Photos
"We are developing a first-ever
mission to identify, capture and
relocate and asteroid
," NASA chief Charles Bolden said in a
statement. "This mission represents
an unprecedented technological feat
that will lead to new scientific
discoveries and technological
capabilities and help protect our
home planet. This asteroid initiative
brings together the best of NASA’s
science, technology and human
exploration efforts to achieve the
president’s goal of sending humans to
an asteroid by 2025."
How to Catch an Asteroid
NASA's 2014 budget sets aside a $78
million down payment for the
asteroid-capture mission, as well as
additional funds to search for the
candidate space rock for the initial
rendezvous and capture, bringing the
total funding for the project to about
$105 million in 2014.
In all, NASA could spend up to $2.6
billion on the asteroid-capture
mission through 2025, according to a
study conducted by scientists with
Caltech's Keck Institute for Space
Studies in Pasadena last year. That
study reviewed the feasibility of
robotically capturing a 500-ton
asteroid about 23 feet (7 meters) wide
and placing it in orbit near the moon
by 2025.
Bolden said NASA's new mega-rocket,
the Space Launch System, and its
Orion deep-space capsule would be
used for the manned portions of the
asteroid capture mission. The agency
will also "develop new technologies
like solar electric propulsion and laser
communications — all critical
components of deep space
exploration."
The Space Launch System and Orion
capsule are part of NASA's Exploration
Systems division, which is funded at $
2.7 billion in 2014 in the new budget,
down from $3 billion last year.

www.mashable.com/2013/04/10/obama-nasa-asteroid-budget/

How much is naija national budget again

Too long.
You were saying?