NASA gets $78 million to start working on a plan to capture a small asteroid and move it into the moon’s orbit, where scientists can study it and eventually (Obama’s goal is 2025) visit in person. The research would be a boon to prospective space miners and, NASA says, help develop technology that could prevent an asteroid from slamming into the Earth and killing everyone. The budget also asks for continued funding for the Orion rocket, which will eventually take humans to Mars, and money to send a large rover to the red planet by 2020.
