NASA bets on asteroid mission as best path to Mars
Some scientists question whether redirect plan would get humans any closer to Red Planet
By Meghan Rosen
Somewhere above the clouds, way up into the deep space of the inner solar system, there’s an asteroid tumbling near Earth with NASA’s name on it.
Within the next decade or so, the space agency wants to snag the space rock and haul it to the moon. And they’ve hatched two fantastical plans to do it. One would snare an asteroid with a gigantic inflatable bag; the other might send a sticky-fingered robot out to grab a golf cart–sized boulder off an even bigger rock.