Crank The Aerosmith: NASA Needs Your Help To Redirect An Asteroid

In Michael Bay’s magnum opus Armageddon, the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and a group of space weirdoes, Steve Buscemi among them.

Now, you too can be one of those space weirdoes. Except this time, instead of nuking an asteroid into oblivion, NASA is seeking civilian assistance in deflecting one.

According to Yahoo, NASA will accept proposals between September of 2016 and August of 2018 from private companies who reckon they can help fulfill the two stages of its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM).

ARM’s first stage, dated for 2021, will involve sending a robotic vessel to a near-Earth asteroid. The vessel will then collect a “manageable boulder” and drag it back to our lunar orbit. Upon lift-off from the asteroid, the vessel will attempt a “planetary defence demonstration”, using the “gravitational attraction” between the asteroid and spacecraft to deflect the asteroid from its current trajectory.

If successful, it could assist us in future doomsday scenarios where asteroids are seemingly headed right for us – thus sparing Bruce Willis from yet another sacrifice.

The second stage, set for 2026, will involve sending astronauts to the boulder. From there, they can collect asteroid samples and return them to Earth, in what NASA is calling the “single biggest haul of asteroid material ever returned to Earth by a space mission”.

They hope the haul will help them learn about the origin of life on Earth (no spoilers) and whether or not the asteroids hold any water and organic compounds.

So, better start work on your pitches. May we recommend a soundtrack?