Chinese researchers look at possibility of capturing asteroids in Earth orbit
Friday, September 2, 2011 - 09:00
in Astronomy & Space
(PhysOrg.com) -- In an interesting twist regarding the study of asteroids and what happens when they come close to our planet, Hexi Baoyin and his two colleagues, Yang Chen and Junfeng Li at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China have been looking into the possibility of nudging one or more Near Earth Objects (NEOs) into an orbit around the Earth, initially for study, but later on, for the financial windfall that might be had if such an asteroid could be mined for its precious metals. The team has published their results on the pre-print server, arXiv.