NASA draws up plans to land astronaut on doomsday asteroid

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration -- NASA -- is coming up with plans to land an astronaut on an asteroid which is traveling through space at more than 30,000 mph. NASA's goal is to know whether humans could master techniques needed to deflect such a doomsday object if one is ever identified. The proposals have not passed the initial stages yet, and scientists are brainstorming on ideas of the type of spacecraft that will be needed to complete this mission.But, with a smallish asteroid called Apophis having already been identified as a possible threat to Earth in 2036, NASA is taking the exercise very seriously. Chris McKay of the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston recently said "There's a lot of public resonance with the notion that NASA ought to be doing something about killer asteroids ... to be able to send serious equipment to an asteroid. The public wants us to have mastered the problem of dealing with asteroids." It will be important for humans to reach new feats as well as find out what problems exist in the asteroid, and come up with some potential solutions to this speeding problem.