Yuri Kadobnov / AFP - Getty Images

NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg climbs out of a Soyuz spacecraft mock-up at Russia's Star City cosmonaut training center on Tuesday. Nyberg is due to fly to the International Space Station in May, for a fare of $55.8 milllion. That price will rise to $62.7 million for 2014-2015, and $70.7 million for 2016-2017.

By Mike Wall, Space.com 

NASA has signed a new deal that will keep American astronauts flying on Russian spacecraft through early 2017 at a cost of $70.7 million per seat — about $8 million more per astronaut than the previous going rate.

The $424 million deal, which was announced Tuesday, is good for six seats aboard Russia's Soyuz space capsules. Under the agreement, Soyuz vehicles will now ferry NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station through 2016, with return and rescue services extending until June 2017. The previous contract provided Soyuz flights for NASA astronauts through 2015, at a cost of roughly $62.7 million per seat.

NASA has been dependent on the Soyuz since the retirement of its space shuttle fleet in July 2011. The agency is currently encouraging American private spaceflight firms to develop their own astronaut taxis under its Commercial Crew Program. [The Top 10 Private Spaceships]

NASA had hoped that at least one homegrown crew-carrying spaceship would be up and running by 2015, but Congress' failure to fully fund Commercial Crew has made that impossible, agency chief Charles Bolden said. NASA officials are now targeting 2017 for the first American astronauts to fly on commercial spacecraft.

Lawmakers approved $489 million and $406 million for commercial crew in the last two years, respectively, far short of the $830 million and $850 million laid out in President Barack Obama's federal budget requests.

"Because the funding for the president's plan has been significantly reduced, we now won't be able to support American launches until 2017," Bolden wrote in a blog post. "Even this delayed availability will be in question if Congress does not fully support the president's fiscal year 2014 request for our Commercial Crew Program [$821 million], forcing us once again to extend our contract with the Russians."

The top three contenders to fly NASA astronauts to and from the space station are SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Corp. and Boeing. SpaceX is working on a manned version of its Dragon capsule; Boeing is also developing a capsule, called the CST-100, while Sierra Nevada is building a space plane called Dream Chaser.

NASA is also looking to the private sector to fill the space shuttle's cargo-carrying shoes. The agency has signed billion-dollar deals with two American firms, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp., to fly robotic resupply missions to the orbiting lab.

SpaceX has already completed two of its contracted 12 missions using its Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket. Orbital test-flew its Antares rocket for the first time earlier this month and is expected to fly a demonstration mission to the space station with Antares and a spacecraft called Cygnus within the next few months.

The new contract with Russia fully covers Soyuz operations and support, including flight training and launch preparations, NASA officials said. Soyuz spacecraft currently fly not only Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts, but also spacefliers from Canada, Japan and Europe.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

• Russia's Manned Soyuz Space Capsule Explained (Infographic)
• Soyuz Launches And Docks With International Space Station | Video
• Soyuz Rocket Launches 'Express' Trip to Space Station (Photos)

Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Canada's new printed-polymer $5 bill has received the country's highest sendoff, altitude-wise, from International Space Station commander Chris Hadfield. Tuesday's currency-unveiling ceremony in space was just the latest in a series of achievements that have drawn attention to Canada's best-known spaceflier.

Hadfield already has made his mark as a photographer, a musician and composer, and an explainer of outer-space phenomena ranging from crying to vomiting in zero-G. There's a reason why the Bank of Canada turned to him to introduce one of the last currency notes to be converted to counterfeit-resistant polymer: One side of the $5 bill celebrates Canada's contributions to space exploration, including the space station's Canadarm2 and DEXTRE robot.

"I just want to tell you how proud I am to be able to see Canada's achievements in space highlighted on our money," Hadfield told Canadian officials via a space-to-Earth video link. Hadfield said the pictures played to Canada's strength in space robotics.

As Hadfield spoke, he plucked a bill from the wall of the station's Destiny laboratory and set it spinning in zero gravity in front of the camera. The other side of the bill has a less spacey theme: It features a portrait of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who was Canada's prime minister from 1896 to 1911.

Bank of Canada spokeswoman Julie Girard said the outer-space ceremony was "quite a few months in the making." The polymer note was flown up to the space station with Hadfield back in December, and held in reserve for Tuesday's ceremony. "We wanted to be the first to unveil a bank note in space," she told NBC News.

Bank of Canada

This rendition of the Canadian $5 bill shows Canadarm2 and DEXTRE in more detail. The bank note is to be issued in November.

Canada's new $10 note, which commemorates the country's rail system, was unveiled at the same time in Ottawa. The $5 and $10 bills will complete Canada's conversion to polymer-based currency, tricked up with transparent areas and hologram markings to make them harder to counterfeit. The Bank of Canada says these notes should last two to three times longer than the country's cotton-based paper bank notes — and when they wear out, they can be traded in and recycled.

The new notes won't be rolled out to the Canadian public until November. That'll provide enough lead time for training clerks and law enforcement officials to get familiar with the bills. Hadfield will be back on Earth long before November: He's due to get on board the next Soyuz capsule leaving the station on May 14, alongside NASA's Tom Marshburn and Russia's Roman Romanenko.

So what happens to Hadfield's $5 bill? Girard said the astronaut will bring the note down with him, and it will eventually be put on exhibit at the Bank of Canada's currency museum.

Several of Hadfield's priceless photographs of Earth from space are already on exhibit in our latest Month in Space Pictures slideshow. Check out the pictures, plus this bonus 3-D picture of Mars from NASA's Curiosity rover. The 3-D photo was featured in our "Where in the Cosmos" contest on Facebook. Cosmic Log fan Ryan Meader was the first to report that the mountain featured in the picture is referred to as Mount Sharp (by Curiosity's science team) and Aeolis Mons (by the International Astronomical Union).

Meader says he's a long-time reader: "I think it's fair to say that I'm on the hard-core passionate end of the spectrum — so it was to my great delight that I got the jump on this little contest," he wrote.

We're delighted to send Meader a free pair of red-blue 3-D glasses, compliments of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope project — and we'll have a few more spectacles to give away in the weeks to come. So click on the "like" button for the Cosmic Log Facebook page and get ready for the next "Where in the Cosmos" contest.

Slideshow: Month in Space: April 2013

Chris Hadfield / CSA

Feast your eyes on an alligator-like mountain range and other curiosities seen from outer space in April 2013.

Launch slideshow

NASA / JPL-Caltech

A stereo image from NASA's Mars Curiosity rover shows the terrain between the robot and Mount Sharp (a.k.a. Aeolis Mons) inside Gale Crater. Wear red-blue glasses to get the 3-D effect, and don't dwell too much on the hardware in the foreground. Trying to focus in on that part of the picture can make you go cross-eyed.

More about Canada's best-known spaceflier:

• Chris Hadfield's tribute to Boston bomb victims
• What happens to a washcloth in space?
• NBC News archive on Chris Hadfield

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / JPL / Cornell

When some people look at this nine-year-old picture from NASA's Spirit rover, they see a graphic depiction of manhood. Actually, it's standard operating procedure for making a turn on Mars.

Some Mars maniacs just won't grow up: A picture of the track patterns left behind by the Mars rovers' standard turning maneuver has drawn giggles and gasps — merely because it looks like a penis scrawled on the Red Planet.

"The rude drawing has emerged in a series of images taken by one of its rover machines. ... The latest pictures beamed back from one of the rovers show signs that the project's controllers have started to get a bit bored," The Sun, a British tabloid, reported on Wednesday.

Even Sarcastic Rover, one of Twitter's top parody personas, got into the act: "Since everyone's asking, let me just say that some other robot did this ... definitely not me," it tweeted.

The jibes from Sarcastic Rover and The Sun, and tons more like them, were sparked by a Reddit forum's discovery of the picture the day before. But this picture isn't the product of a bored (or filthy-minded) rover driver, and it wasn't beamed down recently. It's part of a classic nine-year-old panorama from NASA's Spirit rover, looking back toward its landing platform. (You can actually see the platform in the high-resolution version of the panorama.)

This type of rover wheel-track pattern, which could euphemistically be called "a bat and two balls," has been left on Mars many times, not only by Spirit (which gave up the ghost in 2010 or so), but also by Opportunity (which is still going strong more than nine years after landing on Mars) and Curiosity (which landed last year).

All those rovers have six wheels, three on each side, and they leave behind two parallel tracks when they're traveling in a straight line. When the rover has to make a turn, the wheels rotate in place to put the robot in the desired direction for the next leg of its trek. If the turn is significant enough, you get a nice set of circles at the end of a pair of parallel tracks.

Got it? Now we can move on — for instance, to lewd pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA / ESA / STScI / AURA / La Plata Obs.

A sub-cloud of dust in the Carina Nebula displays what some have called "the cosmic finger of friendship."

More tracks from the Red Planet:

• That's one small step ... on Mars?
• Curiosity leaves tracks in Morse code
• 3-D adds depth to tracks on Mars

Tip o' the Log to Jia-Rui Cook at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for finding the original Spirit panorama from Mars.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Bigelow Aerospace / NBCNews.com

A mockup created by Bigelow Aerospace shows a moon base with inflatable modules.

Bigelow Aerospace and NASA say they've agreed to look at ways for private ventures to contribute to human exploration missions, perhaps including construction of a moon base. But the space agency emphasized that it's keeping its own focus squarely on corraling an asteroid and then going to Mars.

"As part of our broader commercial space strategy, NASA signed a Space Act Agreement with Bigelow Aerospace to foster ideas about how the private sector can contribute to future human missions," David Weaver, the space agency's associate administrator for communications, said in a statement emailed to NBC News.

"This will provide important information on possible ways to expand our exploration capabilities in partnership with the private sector," Weaver said. "The agency is intensely focused on a bold mission to identify, relocate and explore an asteroid with American astronauts by 2025 — all as we prepare for an even more ambitious human mission to Mars in the 2030s. NASA has no plans for a human mission to the moon."

Eyes on the moon
The moon, however, ranks high among the targets that Bigelow Aerospace has in mind. The Nevada-based company has been working on moonbase concepts for years. During a recent interview on the "Coast to Coast AM" radio show, billionaire founder Robert Bigelow said the potential objectives for private-sector space efforts include a lunar base as well as space stations or refueling depots placed at gravitational balance points in the Earth-moon system.

"We're making no bones about it, that's what we're out to try to accomplish," Bigelow said.

Mike Gold, a Washington-based spokesman for Bigelow Aerospace, explained that his company wanted to help "commercial space achieve escape velocity from LEO," or low Earth orbit.

Gold said the NASA-Bigelow agreement would build on the work done by SpaceX, Orbital Sciences Corp. and other companies to build new spaceships for trips to the International Space Station. "What this is doing is projecting that forward, and exploring what commercial companies can do both to lower the cost of beyond-LEO operations, and to create enhanced capabilities," he said.

The agreement with NASA calls upon Bigelow Aerospace to lay out the potential contributions to exploration beyond Earth orbit. "First, we'll be identifying what the companies and technologies are that could contribute, and then we'll be examining what some of those specific mission scenarios might be," Gold said. During the "Coast to Coast AM" interview, Robert Bigelow said the first phase of the study would take 100 days, and the second phase would take 120 days.

No money is changing hands under the agreement, which Gold said was signed in late March. The recommendations coming from the study could include potential opportunities for NASA to buy or lease facilities from private space ventures.

Earlier this month, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that the space agency would not "take the lead on a human lunar mission." However, Bolden did not rule out the possibility that NASA might play a role in missions led by other countries or private ventures.

Future space stations
Bigelow Aerospace made its mark in low Earth orbit in 2006 and 2007 when it sent two inflatable space modules into orbit aboard Russian launch vehicles. Those space station prototypes, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, are still in orbit. In January, Bigelow Aerospace and NASA struck a deal to deliver a larger inflatable module, known as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module or BEAM, to the International Space Station in 2015 on a SpaceX resupply flight.

Eventually, Bigelow plans to put a separate commercial space station in orbit, assembled from two even larger inflatable modules. Each of these BA330 modules would have a habitable volume of 330 cubic meters, and putting two of them together would create an "Alpha Station" for a maximum crew of 12. Gold said that the company was continuing to discuss the concept with international space agencies and corporations, but he emphasized that the venture depended on having regular commercial flights to orbit.

A key development would be the production of commercial spaceships capable of transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station, Gold said. NASA has said such spaceships should be flying by 2017.

"The BA330 will be ready prior to commercial crew, so that’s roughly the timeframe were looking at," Gold said, "and we're ready to take on customers now."

More about Bigelow Aerospace:

• SpaceX teams up with Bigelow for marketing
• Bigelow worries about China's moon ambitions
• Inside Bigelow's space station deal with NASA

Tip o' the Log to New Space Journal and Space News.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA TV

Russian cosmonauts Roman Romanenko (bottom) and Pavel Vinogradov float outside the International Space Station on Friday during a spacewalk.

By Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. —A 59-year-old Russian cosmonaut became the world's oldest spacewalker Friday, joining a much younger cosmonaut's son for a little maintenance work outside the International Space Station.

Pavel Vinogradov, a cosmonaut for two decades, claimed the honor as he emerged from the hatch with Roman Romanenko. But he inadvertently added to the booming population of space junk when he lost his grip on an experiment tray that he was retrieving toward the end of the 6½-hour spacewalk.

The lost aluminum panel — 18 inches by 12 inches (45 by 30 centimeters) and about 6½ pounds (3 kilograms) — contained metal samples. Scientists wanted to see how the samples had fared after a year out in the vacuum of space. 

Otherwise, the spacewalk went well, with the spacewalkers installing new science equipment and replacing a navigation device needed for the June arrival of a European cargo ship.

Collecting the experiment tray was Vinogradov's last task outside.

The tray drifted toward the solar panels of the main Russian space station compartment, called Zvezda, Russian for Star. Flight controllers did not believe it struck anything, and the object was not thought to pose a safety hazard in the hours and days ahead. 

"That's unfortunate," someone radioed in Russian.

Another panel of similar experiments will be collected on a future spacewalk.

This was the first of eight spacewalks to be conducted this year, most of them by Russians. Two will be led by NASA this summer. 

Until Friday, the oldest spacewalker was retired NASA astronaut Story Musgrave, who was 58 when he helped fix the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993.

Romanenko, 41, is a second-generation spaceflier who's following in his father's bootsteps. Retired cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko performed spacewalks back in the 1970s and 1980s. This was the son's first experience out in the vacuum of space.

Vinogradov made his seventh spacewalk; he ventured into a dark, ruptured chamber at Russia's old Mir space station in 1997 following a cargo ship collision. He arrived late last month for a six-month stay at the space station and will turn 60 aboard the orbiting complex in August.

The spacewalkers joked as they toiled 260 miles (420 kilometers) above the planet.

"I'm afraid of the darkness," one of them said in Russian as the space station passed over the night side of Earth.

Among the newly installed equipment was a Russian experiment called Obstanovka, which will study plasma waves and the effect of space weather on Earth's ionosphere. Vinogradov and Romanenko also replaced a faulty retro-reflector device, a navigational aid that will help guide in the European Space Agency's Albert Einstein cargo ship during an automated docking that is scheduled in June.

Russian flight controllers outside Moscow oversaw Friday's action. The four other space station residents monitored the activity from inside; Canadian commander Chris Hadfield drew the short straw and had to work on a balky toilet. 

This report includes additional information from NASA. Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. 

This story was originally published on Fri Apr 19, 2013 11:28 AM EDT

NASA says it will begin work on an ambitious mission to capture a near-Earth asteroid and bring it to a stable orbit in the Earth-moon system as part of the agency's overall $17.7 billion agenda for the coming year.

The budget request for fiscal year 2014, unveiled on Wednesday, also aims to get U.S. astronauts back to flying on U.S.-based spaceships by 2017, launch the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope by 2018 and send another rover to Mars by 2020. 

The proposed budget is about $50 million less than the amount sought a year ago, but about $1 billion more than the agency's current spending plan. Billions of dollars would be set aside to continue operations on the International Space Station, keep up the work on interplanetary missions, expand the nation's network of Earth-observing satellites and upgrade aerospace technologies. However, the headline-grabber in the budget is the asteroid retrieval mission, which is budgeted for $105 million in spending during the fiscal year beginning in September.

"This mission represents an unprecedented technological feat that will lead to new scientific discoveries and technological capabilities and help protect our home planet," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement accompanying the budget request.

Planning documents suggest that the space agency would launch a probe powered by a next-generation solar electric propulsion system sometime around 2017, to rendezvous with a 7- to 10-meter-wide (25- to 33-foot-wide) asteroid around 2019. A collapsible shroud would be wrapped around the asteroid, and then the probe would pull the space rock to a stable point in high lunar orbit or at a gravitational balance point beyond the far side of the moon.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, officials familiar with the plan told NBC News that NASA was already beginning the work to identify a candidate asteroid. The 2014 budget includes $78 million for planning the mission, and $27 million to accelerate NASA's efforts to detect and characterize potentially hazardous asteroids. NASA's chief financial officer, Elizabeth Robinson, indicated that this spending would come in addition to the $20 million that the space agency currently spends annually on asteroid detection.

The plan for the mission was formally unveiled less than two months after an asteroid streaked through the atmosphere and broke up over Russia. The breakup sparked a meteor blast that shattered windows and injured more than 1,000 people.

That asteroid was thought to have been about 17 meters (55 feet) wide. The type of asteroid targeted for the future NASA mission, in contrast, would be too small to pose a threat to Earth — even if it were to break loose somehow and plunge through the atmosphere.

Astronauts to visit
Bolden said the asteroid-grabbing mission meshed with NASA's plans to head off cosmic threats as well as to prepare for deep-space human exploration. Eventually, astronauts would be sent to study the captured asteroid and bring back samples, most likely during a beyond-the-moon test mission that's already planned for 2021.

"This asteroid initiative brings together the best of NASA's science, technology and human exploration efforts to achieve the president's goal of sending humans to an asteroid by 2025," Bolden said. "We will use existing capabilities such as the Orion crew capsule and Space Launch System rocket, and develop new technologies like solar electric propulsion and laser communications — all critical components of deep-space exploration."

A senior administration official told NBC News on condition of anonymity that the added cost of the asteroid mission would be around $1 billion, spread over several years. That figure doesn't include the estimated $35 billion that is being paid out to develop the SLS/Orion system for deep-space human flights.

As Bolden noted, the asteroid mission would satisfy President Barack Obama's space exploration goal for 2025, and allow NASA to turn its attention to sending astronauts to Mars and its moons in the 2030s. Last week, Bolden signaled that other potential objectives, such as sending humans back to the moon, were not on the agenda for the foreseeable future.

Nevertheless, some lawmakers want NASA to go in a different direction: A bipartisan group of House members last week reintroduced a bill calling on the space agency to develop a plan for establishing a permanent human presence on the moon.

"Last year, the National Research Council committee charged with reviewing NASA’s strategic direction found that there was no support within NASA or from our international partners for the administration’s proposed asteroid mission," Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., said in a statement. "However, there is broad support for NASA to lead a return to the moon. So the U.S. can either lead that effort, or another country will step up and lead that effort in our absence — which would be very unfortunate."

No guarantees
NASA's $17.7 billion spending plan accounts for less than half a percent of Obama's $3.8 trillion request to Congress for fiscal 2014. The entire budget is likely to come under close scrutiny in the Republican-controlled House as well as the Democratic-controlled Senate, and there's no guarantee that the final version will look anything like the White House's proposal. In fact, last year's budget request ended up going nowhere. Instead, the federal government is currently operating under a budget sequestration plan that cut back on previous spending levels.

"This was a meat-ax approach that I think nobody initially intended to have take effect," White House science adviser John Holdren said Wednesday during a budget briefing.

Holdren said the total amount of money budgeted for research and development in 2014 would come to $142.8 billion, which represents a "small decline" in inflation-adjusted dollars compared with 2012 spending levels.

"Although this is not the budget that we would want if financial times were better, it reflects an extraordinary effort by this administration to preserve a key investment in research, development, innovation and STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] education that our country's future requires," Holdren said.

Update for 9:15 p.m. ET April 10: NASA's asteroid retrieval mission could complement commercial efforts to identify and exploit bigger near-Earth objects, said Chris Lewicki, president of the Planetary Resources asteroid-mining venture. He said he's already been involved in an "ongoing discussion" about how such a mission could benefit the public as well as private enterprise.

"Maybe this is a model for a COTS-like program where there are operations put in place for private industry to help develop a marketplace," Lewicki told NBC News.

But Lewicki said the mission will not be easy. "It represents something new that will require NASA and the contractors that help them do it to really stretch their capabilities," he said.

For example, Lewicki said it would be "very challenging" to identify and track deep-space objects in the size range that NASA is targeting — that is, 7 to 10 meters wide. Such objects usually can't be spotted unless they make a close approach to Earth.

"With what's been proposed in the budget, NASA is putting more money on the table to accelerate and leverage more observation activities," Lewicki said. "The question is, is that enough? And is it going to be soon enough?"

More reaction:

• Planetary Resources: Asteroid plan offers 'bold new thinking'
• Deep Space Industries calls for partnerships (via Moon and Back)
• University of Arizona experts welcome asteroid plan
• Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas: Plan comes 'seemingly out of the blue'
• Coalition for Space Exploration backs budget proposal

More about asteroids:

• Asteroid miners are getting a boost from NASA
• How asteroid mission could lead to Mars
• Cosmic Log archive on asteroids

Correction: I originally wrote that the full budget proposal was seeking $3.8 billion, but it's actually $3.8 trillion. Unfortunately, it's not the first time one of those wayward "illions" has slipped through the net. Thank goodness I have sharp-eyed commenters to set me straight.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Wed Apr 10, 2013 2:54 PM EDT

DigitalSpace

An Orion exploration vehicle approaches a near-Earth asteroid in this artist's conception. Such a mission would be carried out in 2021 under the White House's new plan for NASA exploration beyond Earth orbit.

NASA's accelerated vision for exploration calls for moving a near-Earth asteroid even nearer to Earth, sending out astronauts to bring back samples within a decade, and then shifting the focus to Mars, a senior Obama administration official told NBC News on Saturday.

The official said the mission would "accomplish the president's challenge of sending humans to visit an asteroid by 2025 in a more cost-effective and potentially quicker time frame than under other scenarios." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no authorization to discuss the plan publicly.

The source said more than $100 million would be sought for the mission and other asteroid-related activities in its budget request for the coming fiscal year, which is due to be sent to Congress on Wednesday. That confirms comments made on Friday by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., a one-time spaceflier who is now chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Science and Space. It also confirms a report about the mission that appeared last month in Aviation Week.

The asteroid retrieval mission is based on a scenario set out last year by a study group at the Keck Institute for Space Studies. NASA's revised scenario would launch a robotic probe toward a 500-ton, 7- to 10-meter-wide (25- to 33-foot-wide) asteroid in 2017 or so. The probe would capture the space rock in a bag in 2019, and then pull it to a stable orbit in the vicinity of the moon, using a next-generation solar electric propulsion system. That would reduce the travel time for asteroid-bound astronauts from a matter of months to just a few days.

The Keck study estimated the total mission cost at $2.6 billion — but the administration official said the price tag could be reduced to $1 billion, or roughly $100 million a year, if the mission took advantage of an already-planned test flight for NASA's heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew exploration vehicle. That flight would send astronauts around the moon and back in 2021.

"This mission would combine the best of NASA's asteroid identification, technology development, and human exploration efforts to capture and redirect a small asteroid to just beyond the moon to set up a human mission using existing resources and equipment, including the heavy-lift rocket and deep-space capsule that have been under development for several years," the official said in an email.

The 2014 budget would set aside $78 million for planning the asteroid retrieval mission, plus $27 million to accelerate NASA's efforts to detect and characterize potentially hazardous asteroids. The federal government currently spends $20 million annually on asteroid detection.

Meteor sparked action
The official said the plan had been under discussion for months, but coalesced after February's meteor blast over Russia. The meteor's breakup injured more than 1,000 people and sparked a worldwide sensation. It also sparked a series of congressional hearings about threats from space, during which Republicans as well as Democrats hinted that they would support more funding to counter asteroid threats.

"This plan would help us prove we're smarter than the dinosaurs," said the official, referring to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other species 65 million years ago. An asteroid in the 7- to 10-meter range would be about half as wide as the one that broke up over Russia. That's far too small to pose any threat to Earth, even if the space rock was coming directly at our planet. But the captured asteroid could provide valuable insights for dealing with bigger ones in the future. 

Initial preparations for the mission won't have to wait for a deal to end budget sequestration, or approval of the budget for the 2014 fiscal year. NASA would begin immediately to identify the asteroid for retrieval, and take advantage of existing efforts funded by the agency's science, technology and human exploration directorates. The most expensive element of the plan, the multibillion-dollar Orion/SLS launch system, is already being funded under the terms of an agreement with Congress.

Discussions with NASA's international and commercial partners will continue in the months and years ahead, the official said. The retrieved asteroid could conceivably become a target for other scientific missions or asteroid-mining operations. In the process, governments might have to address issues surrounding the ownership and exploitation of space resources.

"We're trying to force the question," the official said. "We're trying to push the envelope on this new frontier."

Questions raised
Some observers have already raised questions about the plan, based on the advance reports. Scott Pace, the director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, told The Associated Press that it was a bad idea on scientific as well as diplomatic grounds. It would be better for the United States to join forces with other countries to conduct a comprehensive survey of all potentially dangerous asteroids, Pace said.

Rick Tumlinson, chairman of an asteroid-mining venture called Deep Space Industries, said he was concerned that NASA's asteroid mission might interfere with private-sector efforts — and he called on NASA to rely on private enterprise wherever possible. The administration official assured NBC News that cooperation with commercial ventures as well as other groups such as the B612 Foundation was part of the plan.

The official noted that the mission would provide a relatively low-cost route to satisfying President Barack Obama's goal of sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025. The lessons learned during the mission could be applied to future missions aimed at diverting other asteroids — perhaps to head off a potential threat, or conduct further scientific study, or exploit the potentially valuable resources that asteroids contain.

After the asteroid mission, NASA would turn its attention to a farther-out destination: Mars. The Obama administration has called for astronauts to travel to the Red Planet and its moons by the mid-2030s, and that would be the next major target for space exploration. The administration official told NBC News that other concepts, such as sending astronauts back to the moon or creating a deep-space platform beyond the far side of the moon, are not on the agenda for the foreseeable future. 

More about asteroids:

• Asteroid miners get boost from NASA
• Senator says asteroid mission is in the works
• Cosmic Log archive on asteroids

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.