A trip to one of Earth's nearest neighbors beyond the moon is being proposed as a scientifically important and doable next step to get humans back into space exploration. Shoemaker, best known for discovering the comet that slammed into Jupiter's atmosphere in 1994, made his case for an asteroid trip at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Asteroids are already on the exploration agenda.
NASA will launch an unmanned probe next week to Eros, a nearby asteroid. But Shoemaker contends humans should take a look in person. I don't think I will live long enough to see us get to Mars. These rocks are left over from that period. Some are planetesimals, the chucks of stuff that came together to build the Earth.