| abstract | - The Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), also known as the Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization (ARU) mission and the Asteroid Initiative, is a potential future space mission proposed by NASA. Still in the early stages of planning and development, the spacecraft would rendezvous with a large near-Earth asteroid and use robotic arms with anchoring grippers to retrieve a 6-meter boulder from the asteroid. The spacecraft will characterize the asteroid and demonstrate at least one planetary defense technique before transporting the boulder to a stable lunar orbit, where it could be further analyzed both by robotic probes and by a future manned mission. If funded, the mission would be launched in December 2021, with the additional objectives to test a number of new capabilities needed for future human expeditions to deep space, including advanced ion thrusters.
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