[meteorite-list] The Asteroid That Could Be The First We Keep For A Pet (2009 BD)

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2013/12/27/the-asteroid-that-could-be-the-first-we-keep-for-a-pet/ 

The Asteroid That Could Be The First We Keep For A Pet
Erick Mack
Forbes
December 27, 2013

NASA's 2014 budget includes $100 million to get going on a long-term project 
to capture a smallish asteroid using a kind of robotic space lasso and 
bring it into orbit around earth where it can be probed and visited by 
astronauts and researchers.

A rocky guy known as NEO 2009BD, which might look like a much smaller 
version of Asteroid Tempel 1 pictured to the right, could be an ideal 
candidate for humanity's first pet space rock.

The current plan for NASA's "Asteroid Robotic Retrieval Mission" calls 
for a candidate asteroid of seven to ten meters in diameter, and it looks 
like 2009BD could fit the bill, according to information provided by the 
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

However, researchers still need to gather more information on the rock, 
as its exact size, density and composition are still uncertain. 2009BD 
is the smallest object ever reported on using data from the Spitzer Space 
Telescope, which is typically used for spotting much larger objects.

Still, 2009BD has an orbit around the sun that is similar to that of Earth, 
at about 400 days, and it will be in our neighborhood again in late 2022, 
which is when NASA's proposed asteroid capture mission could take place.

The space agency is in the process of narrowing down possible candidates, 
and more information on this one will be needed soon - before it gets 
too far away from us for more precise measurements - if it's going to 
have a real chance of becoming our first natural space pet.