NASA Down to Three Candidates in Search for an Asteroid to Lasso

NASA is down to three finalists in the search for an asteroid to lasso, the agency announced Wednesday.

The candidates were identified from a list of 14 total, Paul Chodas, a senior scientist in NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office, told reporters on Wednesday.

"It's mostly orbital constraints that those 14 satisfy," Chodas said, according to Space.com. "We did not have the opportunity to characterize the size. We have two to three which we'll characterize in the next year and if all goes well, those will be valid candidates that could be certified targets and we'll pass by another in the year 2016."

The mission to bag an asteroid and place it in orbit around the Moon was prepared last spring by the Keck Institute for Space Studies with the end goal of allowing scientists to study the space bodies more closely.

Overall, the Asteroid Redirect Mission, as it's called, is seen as an important step in achieving the mandate given to NASA by the government to land humans on an asteroid as part of the ultimate goal of landing them on Mars. NASA, meanwhile, has touted the plan as one that will help the space agency better prepare for the possibility of a hazardous asteroid collision and test out key technology designed to extend the reach of manned missions further into deep space.

The mission is scheduled to unfold over the next four to five years, the Los Angeles Times reports Brian Muirhead, chief engineer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as saying. This is broken down into an estimated year and a half to get a spacecraft to the asteroid followed by another three spent redirecting the space rock into a stable lunar orbit.

Once in place, NASA officials said it will take approximately nine days to travel to reach the asteroid and 11 days to return from it.

"This is a bold mission," said Steve Stich, deputy director of engineering at NASA's Johnson Space Center, according to the Times. "We are talking about sending two crews further than we've ever been in space."