This would involve slowing a passing asteroid down and having it orbit around our planet which it ordinarily would not do.. well what could go wrong here?!! via The Sun: An asteroid hurtling toward Earth sounds like a nightmare scenario - but a bunch of space scientists have hatched a plan to make it happen. Why? Because capturing the space rocks could allow us to probe them for alien life and even mine them for valuable resources like precious metals. In a new study, researchers from the University of Glasgow reveal that aerobraking could help them pull off the insane stunt. Aerobraking is a drag maneuver used by spacecraft like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to change their orbit or speed by using the atmosphere of a planet as a resistance that can pull them down for landing - with the rest left to gravity. The authors claim that this process could be used to slow down small asteroids enough so that they don't just skim past Earth, but remain in orbit, where they could be mined for