It costs a lot of money and uses a lot of fuel to send anything to Space, let alone return "IT" to Earth. Places like Morocco are ideal locations to search for extraterrestrial objects that fall to Earth like meteorites to study Space.
Most asteroids are found in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, and in the Kuiper Belt past Neptune.
SciFi like Star Wars misrepresent the density of the asteroid belts... there is FAR more space between them. If they were closer, they would COLLIDE with each other because of gravity.
How old is the Solar System?
Where did everything else in the Solar System come from?
Why do we need to study other celestial objects to determine how old Earth is?
Hale-Bopp was an unusually bright comet that flew by Earth, reaching its closest approach to the planet in 1997. It was most spectacular in the Northern Hemisphere and visible to the naked eye for about 18 months. The next time the Hale-Bopp comet will be visible without a telescope will be in the year 4380. Will humans be around to witness it?
We are still discovering new (and MASSIVE) comets because the orbital periods of some are THOUSANDS of years. Studying new comets helps us understand the structure of our Solar System in its deepest reaches.
