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NASA may be planning to capture an asteroid and drag it into the moon’s orbit, giving the Moon a moon of its own.

The mission would cost about $2.6 billion–slightly more than NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover–and it would take about six to 10 years to complete the mission.

But why do it?

What NASA really wants to do is to send astronauts to a nearby asteroid, but this would expose them to long-term radiation beyond the earth’s protective magnetic field –so why not bring the asteroid to them? If we establish a base on the moon, it would be a short trip to reach it.
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Say we do finally get to the moon–how are we going to get all the tools we need to build things up there?
The answer might be the new science of 3-D printing: All you need to do is take along a laptop and a 3-D printer and you can have anything you want. But you need appropriate raw materials to print ON, so it’s still a problem.
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When astronauts brought back moon rocks, scientists discovered they were similar to the rocks here on Earth, meaning that the moon must be the result of an impact that knocked a piece of the Earth into orbit. The isotope match is too close to support the theory that the moon could have been made partly of material from another planet.
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Despite Curiosity, our space program has pretty much moved to private companies. Now there’s a company that’s trying to raise cash to build an elevator to the moon. They hope to have it ready in less than a decade.

LiftPort’s Space Elevator Project is trying to raise $3 million on Kickstarter, and it’s already gone past its $8,000 goal for the first phase. A space elevator could take robots, cargo and humans to the surface of the moon, and space tourist dollars could eventually make the project pay off.
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