NASA plans to reach an asteroid orbit nearest to Earth by 2025 and one possible location in Australia is strongly considered by scientists as one of the landing sites for the mission, according to a news report.

The Daily Telegraph said on Thursday that the RAAF's Woomera Test Range in South Australia is currently on the list of Dr Paul Abell, NASA's head for its Planetary Small Bodies, Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science.

Abell is in the country to check on the Woomera site and determine its possible role in the exploration project dubbed by NASA as Near Earth Object, which aims to prevent an asteroid's collision with our planet.

Scientists have established previous incident of an asteroid hitting Earth, millions of years ago, which they said was the single catastrophic event that led to the extinction of dinosaurs. They fear that a repeat of such event would wipe out the human race, should it happen.

Once realised, the NASA mission would serve as man's experimental exploration of other space territories that could even reach Mars, which has become a $100 billion flagship project of US President Barack Obama following the cancelation of the United States' return to the moon last year.

Abell said that the mission's likely landing site would be dictated by many factors and among them is its length, which NASA said could last a maximum of 180 days, as he pointed out that "Woomera could be among the choices."

At present, NASA has yet to define a specific asteroid to be targeted by the mission though Abell said that the Siding Springs Observatory at Coonabarabran could help pick the target from the thousands of 'near-Earth objects' less than 10,000,000km from Earth's orbit.

He noted too that those objects are currently classified by NASA as potentially hazardous objects or PHOs yet the Near Earth Object mission will still conduct possible search for organic molecules that could point to traces of life's origins, as well as particles of water and precious metals.

Abell said that one of the challenges facing the mission is the lesser gravity on asteroid, which ruled out the possibility of astronauts moon walking on its surface as he stressed that one slight knee-jerk of man standing on an asteroid could trigger "take-off velocity."