geekmansworld writes The Chinese want to capture an asteroid in Earth orbit and mine From the article:. On the surface, causing a near-Earth asteroid appears to be one of those what might go wrong scenarios we usually try and avoid, and for good reasons. Asteroid impacts are large hard times, the China, however, seem fairly optimistic that they could change the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid with just enough (a shift of only about 1300 feet per second or so) to bring it to temporarily enter Earth’s orbit around twice the distance than the Moon.