When NASA sends spacecraft to asteroids like these, be prepared for some funky, retro craft designs.
In the future, scientists want to be able to send spacecraft to study asteroids such as the one that will approach the Earth on Friday. A concept for these landers may look familiar to anyone who grew up in the 1970s.
Egg-shaped and weighted at the bottom, the landers – prototype designs for a possible future NASA mission – look like roly-poly Weebles, which wobble, as the old jingle goes, but don’t fall down.
The craft are still only computer simulations, a decade away from being ready to launch, but their simple design overcomes some of the biggest challenges in exploring asteroids’ alien landscapes.
Read the rest of this post at http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/14/how-to-land-on-an-asteroid/
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