From Alan Boyle at MSNBC (May 10, 2010), we learn:
Sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid ranks as one of the top goals for NASA’s retooled vision for space exploration. A year ago, President Barack Obama told NASA to gear up to take on such a mission by the year 2025. Up to that time, NASA had been focusing on a return to the moon — which means that the agency had to retool its mission plans. This week’s engineering tests, organized by NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, or NEEMO, will help NASA get ready to set off for its new target.”Even experts don’t know what the surface of an asteroid is going to be like,” NEEMO project manager Bill Todd said today in a news release. “There may be asteroids that we don’t even know about that we’ll be visiting. So we’re figuring out the best way to do that.”