WHEN President Barack Obama announced that the next destination for a US astronaut would be an asteroid, it caught many by surprise. Yet the move is not as sharp a break as it might seem with the Bush-era plan to return astronauts to the moon.
“The decision to go to an asteroid is not as sharp a break as it might seem with the Bush-era plan for the moon”
Both missions would serve as intermediate steps in the long-term plan to send humans to Mars in search of life. Moon landings would help NASA develop the skills to land on…
