Of about 9, 700 near-Earth asteroids discovered so far, about 5, 200 are thought to be Apollos.
It is thousands of times bigger than some of its neighbours and part of a group known as the near-Earth asteroids.
So far they have counted more than 9, 000 near-Earth asteroids, and they spot another 800 new space rocks on average each year.
The mission would further clarify the threat that this particular object poses, and better predict the orbits of other near-Earth asteroids, Beshore said.
Planetary Resources plans to use near-earth asteroids as stepping stones to exploring the rest of the solar system by using their water to both support life and propel rockets.
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With its superior lift capability, the SLS will expand our reach in the solar system and allow us to explore cis-lunar space, near-Earth asteroids, Mars and its moons and beyond.
The good news is that below a certain size, depending on what they're made of, some near-Earth asteroids don't pose any danger, burning up as they pass through the atmosphere.
The point is that astronomers say that we don't know anything about 5 or 10% of the near-Earth asteroids that are larger than 1km in size - 20 times larger and radically heavier than this week's visitor.
There are probably many more comets than near-Earth asteroids, but Nasa points out they spend almost all of their lifetimes at great distances from the Sun and Earth, so that they contribute only about 10% to the census of larger objects that have struck the Earth.
NASA's slice of the pie includes a plan that would improve detection of near-Earth asteroids, send a solar-powered robot ship (like the NASA concept above) to capture one of the space rocks and tow it back to a stable orbit near Earth, where researchers could study it up close.
That was the fate of British Liberal Democrat Lembit Opik, who was widely mocked for his talk about protecting the Earth from asteroids.
Dr Cordey said the company had worked with a number of space authorities on other methods of protecting the Earth from asteroids but this one would be able to target a wider range.
Near-Earth objects are asteroids or comets, believed to be remnants from the formation of the planets, whose orbits brings them close to the Earth.
Near-Earth objects are comets or asteroids in orbits that allow them to enter Earth's neighborhood.
While mining the millions of asteroids around Earth opens up a new area for the mining industry, questions arise regarding staking claims and owning property, or asteroids in this case, in space.
It is only every 2, 000 years or so that an object the size of a football field descends to earth and causes significant damage, according to NASA. Giant asteroids that crash to earth such as the one that most likely extinguished the dinosaurs tend to occur on the scale of millions of years.
It makes sense that smaller asteroids pass Earth more frequently and, on average, closer.
In three recent cases, astronomers estimated -- and then revised their estimates to eliminate the threat -- that asteroids might strike Earth in the next century.
Up-close examination of a captured asteroid would also yield insights into the economic value of space rock resources and shed light on the best ways to deflect potentially dangerous asteroids away from Earth.
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Between 500, 000 to 1 million large asteroids near are near Earth and Mars.
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The results suggest the meteor belongs to a well known family of space rocks - known as the Apollo asteroids - that cross Earth's orbit.
The US space agency hopes these changes will save it money that can then be invested in exploration missions far beyond Earth, at destinations such as asteroids and Mars.
And the Moon is close by and always in the sky, unlike the asteroids that flyby the Earth at incredible velocities or inhabit orbits tens of millions of miles away that take years to reach.
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There will also, according to Charlie Bolden, NASA's administrator, be a mission to the sun, to study the solar wind, and one to improve the agency's ability to detect and catalogue interesting (but potentially dangerous) asteroids that pass near Earth.
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Metals, platinum-group elements, rare earth elements, and other volatiles, like H, H2O, and carbon compounds, are abundant on asteroids, many of which are relatively accessible from Earth.
They are probably also the explanation for the fact that, over the past 100m years or so, the number of asteroids that have hit the Earth is about twice that which would have been expected.
It plans to tap some of the thousands of asteroids that pass relatively close to Earth and extract their raw materials.
Astronomers think there are about half a million asteroids the size this one near Earth, NASA said, but less than one percent have been detected.
"It's unimaginable to think we'll need to rely on asteroids from space to supply the Earth with metals, " said Scott McLean, chief executive of HTX Minerals Corp.
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