Recovering an asteroid

[michaelhester07]

After dragging a few asteroids to orbit I decided to see if i could recover one. I attached a ship with a boatload of parachutes to a Class B asteroid and flew it in for an ocean landing. Recovered it and... no science.

Yea ok it got a little contaminated in the ocean but I should get a little bit of science for that. Thus the suggestion...

Can you guys add science reward for recovering an asteroid? Depending on the size of course and it could be single time or multiple time.

How to recover one IRL: attach a heat shield to it an a bunch of parachutes... fly it into the atmosphere, pop the chutes... and your science lab has a piece of ancient rock to study for years instead of fragments.

[Vanamonde]

Since bringing a multi-ton mass of asteroid substance to an intact soft landing would be insanely improbable, it seems reasonable to me that there's no science to be gotten from something that shouldn't be possible in the first place.

[KASASpace]

Well, maybe an A?

[Shna_na]

They're pretty easy to land, I flew a class C in straight from interplanetary space on a highly inclined orbit. It was in the atmosphere for less than a minute before it hit the ground, bounced, and stayed, The craft survived, so I just used it for science instead of recovering it.

[NERVAfan]

Eh, the smaller KSP asteroids are not that big, and the Hoba meteorite (over 60 tons and 2.7x2.7.x0.9 meters according to Wikipedia) landed intact without artificial aid. So with a heatshield and parachutes, landing an A class asteroid doesn't seem that implausible... it's just "extreme sample return".

I think the problem doing it in RL is more "you want to hit Earth with an asteroid??" (plus, we already have lots of meteorites that fell naturally). Also, detecting an asteroid that small is not at all easy.

[Supernovy]

I believe asteroid samples can be taken in every situation, so you'd get another chunk of science points by taking a sample of it once it's splashed down.

[KASASpace]

Also, detecting an asteroid that small is not at all easy.

Yet they can track objects a hundred times smaller.