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- The goal of the endeavor, whose title is the Asteroid Redirect Mission, is for NASA to find a chunk of space rock of perhaps twenty or thirty feet across, then send a robotic spacecraft to capture the asteroid in what is described, vaguely, as a “high-strength bag.” (The size of the asteroid, Paul Chodas, of the agency’s Near Earth Object Program, said, “is dictated by the size of the bag.”) The craft would tow its catch toward Earth and set it into orbit around the moon, where it would move slowly enough for astronauts to mount it. Finally, astronauts would rendezvous with the asteroid, chipping off pieces for further study.