# Topics > Space >  NASA's Asteroid Initiative and Asteroid Grand Challenge

## Airicist

Website - nasa.gov/content/asteroid-initiative-related-documents

Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization on Wikipedia




> The Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization (ARU) mission, also known as the Asteroid Initiative, is a potential future space mission proposed by NASA. Still in the early stages of planning and development, the ARU is a mission to bring a small near-Earth asteroid into lunar orbit, where it could be further analyzed both by unmanned craft and by a future manned mission. NASA hopes to complete the mission, which may take anywhere from six to ten years, in time to accomplish its stated goal of landing humans on an asteroid by 2025.
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> The Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization mission, excluding any manned missions to an asteroid which it may enable, is predicted by a Keck Institute for Space Studies study to cost about $2.6 billion, of which $105 million has been proposed for 2014. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has stated that: "This mission represents an unprecedented technological feat that will lead to new scientific discoveries and technological capabilities and help protect our home planet."

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## Airicist

NASA's Asteroid Grand Challenge 

 Published on Mar 10, 2014




> NASA's Asteroid Grand Challenge is to find all asteroid threats to human populations and know what to do about them.

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## Airicist

NASA Seeks Bounty Hunters for Asteroids - $35K in Awards

 Published on Mar 11, 2014




> NASA's Asteroid Grand Challenge is asking citizen scientists to improve how we identify asteroids. The contest runs through August 2014.

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