The re-election of President Barack Obama has kept NASA on track
to send human explorers to an asteroid, and that means work on a
21st-century spacecraft to fly astronauts to the target space
rock and hover nearby — or maybe even pogo off its surface —
will go ahead as well. As of 2010, Obama has challenged NASA to
get astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, and on to Mars by the
mid-2030s. Whether or not the space agency can stick to that
schedule largely depends on its future budget, experts say, but
regardless of the pace, work on the asteroid mission is already
under way. The Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (SEV) is
a prototype that began its design life as a wheeled moon rover.
When the president shifted NASA's focus from the moon-oriented
Constellation program set up by the Bush administration, the
space agency adapted the SEV to meet the needs of an asteroid
mission instead. That meant taking off the wheels and converting
the vehicle into two parts: a robotic sled that will be used for
propulsion an