The European Space Agency (ESA) is considering a space mission called Marco Polo, in which a spacecraft would land on a small asteroid, drill into its surface to collect samples of rock and dust, and then fly back to Earth where it would drop its sample capsule down to the surface. Two satellite manufacturing companies are currently conducting a feasibility study; if ESA signs off on the proposal, Marco Polo could sail off into space in 2017.
Asteroids are chunks of debris left over from the chaotic mass that spun around the young Sun during the formation of the Solar System about 4.6 billion years ago. The rest of the material coalesced into planets [The Daily Mail].
Researchers say that studying the composition of an asteroid could give them insight into how the solar system formed. The roughly $430 million mission would also serve as a warm-up for a hypothetical ...
