SAN FRANCISCO — As one of the three finalists in NASA’s New Frontiers program, principal investigator Michael Drake is enthusiastic about the prospect of sending a spacecraft to an asteroid to carve off pieces and bring them to Earth for study. The primitive asteroid in question may hold important clues to the origins of life as well as the formation of the solar system, Drake said.

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Debra Werner is a correspondent for SpaceNews based in San Francisco. Debra earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in Journalism from Northwestern University. She is a recipient...