It has been reported that NASA's human exploration strategy gained some clarity after the announcement of what type of asteroid astronauts might visit in coming decades after being launched from Kennedy Space Center.

Five days of collaboration and strategy clashes culminated Friday in two Caltech presentations that demystified how a potential asteroid-landing mission is a stepping stone towards getting astronauts on Mars.

In the 2015 Caltech Space Challenge, 32 international students were selected and were further divided into two teams.

The teams were then asked to design a mission where astronauts would land on an asteroid both to mine for resources and to demonstrate how the raw materials could be used.

As per sources, the winning team Voyager produced the concept design. But Bill Tandy, project manager of Team Explorer called his efforts as winning.

Tandy, from the University of Colorado Boulder, said, "I learned so much about science and astronauts and vehicles and launching and trajectory and teamwork. Really great educational opportunity".

Team Voyager set their mission between March 30, 2024, and October 16, 2024. The 39-day crewed mission would devote 22 days for science inquiry and 17 days for travel using Orion and the SLS. Graduate and undergraduate students from 14 countries, including India, Germany and Brazil, arrived at the California Institute of Technology Sunday.

The participants were selected from a pool of 220 applicants from 104 worldwide universities to participate in Caltech's third Space Challenge.

Many of the participants were from the American schools such as Caltech, UCLA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale. Some international schools like the University of Strathclyde, the Technical University of Madrid and Ecole Polytechnique also participated.