NASA will start training a team astronauts to land on an asteroid in the next month, in preparation for a mission that will take humans farther from Earth than ever before. They’ll be collecting mineral samples and determining how to destroy an asteroid in the event that it might collide with the Earth. Seriously.

More details will emerge in the next month or so – such as which asteroid has been targeted – but NASA has confirmed that the mission will take folk a little under five million kilometres from the Earth.

Said Major Tim Peake, a member of the asteroid team:

Asteroids are interesting on a number of different levels. NASA is focused on the science you can achieve as asteroids are essentially a historical record of billions of years of our universe where we can take samples from.

Peake says current technology could support a mission lasting up to a year, with 30 days actually spent on the asteroid’s surface.

He didn’t mention how cool it would be to get to blow up an asteroid, like in that movie.

[Source: BoingBoing]