PASADENA (JPL) – NASA is on the hunt for an asteroid to capture with a robotic spacecraft, redirect to a stable orbit around the moon, and send astronauts to study in the 2020s — all on the agency’s human Path to Mars. Agency officials announced on Thursday, June 19, recent progress to identify candidate asteroids for its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), increase public participation in the search for asteroids, and advance the mission’s design.
NASA plans to launch the ARM robotic spacecraft in 2019 and will make a final choice of the asteroid for the mission about a year before the spacecraft launches. NASA is working on two concepts for the mission: The first is to fully capture a very small asteroid in open space, and the second is to collect a boulder-sized sample off of a much larger asteroid. Both concepts would require redirecting an asteroid less than 32 feet (10 meters) in size into the moon’s orbit. The agency will choose between these two concepts in late 2014 and further refine the mission’s design.
The agency will award a total of $4.9 million for concept studies addressing components of ARM. Proposals for the concept studies were solicited through a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) released in March, and selected in collaboration with NASA’s Space Technology and Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorates. The studies will be completed over a six-month period beginning in July, during which time system concepts and key technologies needed for ARM will be refined and matured. The studies also will include an assessment of the feasibility of potential commercial partners to support the robotic mission.
“With these system concept studies, we are taking the next steps to develop capabilities needed to send humans deeper into space than ever before, and ultimately to Mars, while testing new techniques to protect Earth from asteroids,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.
For more information about the BAA and award recipients, visit:
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope made recent observations of an asteroid designated 2011 MD, which bears the characteristics of a good candidate for the full capture concept. While NASA will continue to look for other candidate asteroids during the next few years as the mission develops, astronomers are making progress to find suitable candidate asteroids for humanity’s next destination into the solar system.
“Observing these elusive remnants that may date from the formation of our solar system as they come close to Earth is expanding our understanding of our world and the space it resides in,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Closer study of these objects challenges our capabilities for future exploration and will help us test ways to protect our planet from impact. The Spitzer observatory is one of our tools to identify and characterize potential candidate targets for the asteroid mission.”
Analysis of Spitzer’s infrared data shows 2011 MD is roughly 20 feet (6 meters) in size and has a remarkably low density — about the same as water, which supports the analysis of observations taken in 2011.
The asteroid appears to have a structure perhaps resembling a pile of rocks, or a “rubble pile.” Since solid rock is about three times as dense as water, this suggests about two-thirds of the asteroid must be empty space. The research team behind the observation says the asteroid could be a collection of small rocks, held loosely together by gravity, or it may be one solid rock with a surrounding halo of small particles. In both cases, the asteroid mass could be captured by the ARM capture mechanism and redirected into lunar orbit.
The findings based on the Spitzer observation were published Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. For more information, visit:
To date, nine asteroids have been identified as potential candidates for the mission, having favorable orbits and measuring the right size for the ARM full capture option. With these Spitzer findings on 2011 MD, sizes now have been established for three of the nine candidates. Another asteroid — 2008 HU4 — will pass close enough to Earth in 2016 for interplanetary radar to determine some of its characteristics, such as size, shape and rotation. The other five will not get close enough to be observed again before the final mission selection, but NASA’s Near-Earth Object (NEO) Program is finding several potential candidate asteroids per year. One or two of these get close enough to Earth each year to be well characterized.
Boulders have been directly imaged on all larger asteroids visited by spacecraft so far, making retrieval of a large boulder a viable concept for ARM. During the next few years, NASA expects to add several candidates for this option, including asteroid Bennu, which will be imaged up close by the agency’s Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission in 2018.
NASA’s search for candidate asteroids for ARM is a component of the agency’s existing efforts to identify all NEOs that could pose a threat to the Earth. Some of these NEOs could become candidates for ARM because they are in orbits similar to Earth’s. More than 11,140 NEOs have been discovered as of June 9. Approximately 1,483 of those have been classified as potentially hazardous.
In June 2013, NASA announced an Asteroid Grand Challenge (AGC) to accelerate this observation work through non-traditional collaborations and partnerships. On the first anniversary of the grand challenge this week, NASA officials announced new ways the public can contribute to the Asteroid Grand Challenge, building on the successes of the challenge to date. To that end, NASA will host a two-day virtual workshop — dates to be determined — on emerging opportunities through the grand challenge, in which the public can participate.
“There are great ways for the public to help with our work to identify potentially hazardous asteroids,” said Jason Kessler, program executive for NASA’s Asteroid Grand Challenge. “By tapping into the innovative spirit of people around the world, new public-private partnerships can help make Earth a safer place, and perhaps even provide valuable information about the asteroid that astronauts will visit.”
For more information about the workshop and public opportunities through the grand challenge, visit:
The Asteroid Grand Challenge and Asteroid Redirect Mission comprise NASA’s Asteroid Initiative. Capabilities advanced and tested through the Asteroid Initiative will help astronauts reach Mars in the 2030s. For more information about the Asteroid Initiative and NASA’s human Path to Mars, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Well, NASA needs a project to distract them from the harm they seem bent on doing here on Earth.
The previous President set them on a task, a goal, something that would have spurred technology and been a boon to aerospace and high-tech unseen since the 60s. The current president erased that with the stroke of a pen. He replaced it with… well, nothing. But then, he’s demonstrated he’s good at surrendering. And some people stereotype that quality as French.
Personally I think it’s pretty cool, but almost as pointless on its own as gathering rocks from the Moon. Don’t get me wrong, visiting the Moon was an awesome achievement, getting it to the point where the average person was no longer awed was even more awesome. But most of us are aware that the very thing we’re reading or writing with right now only exists because of the kick NASA gave it.
Developing technology is no longer even remotely as difficult or expensive as it was in the 60s and 70s. I buy $2 microprocessors more powerful than everything NASA had for Apollo 11. Our cars are designed and built using technology that was barely even imaginable in the 60s. Designing spacecraft and launch systems should be a piece of cake today. Heck, Boeing just developed a composite commercial jetliner that stretched the limits of materials and engineering beyond imagination, technology that would massively benefit manned space flight, if we had it.
Me, I recently re-watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and was amazed at how much of what was truly Science Fiction would be doable today if we only had the will. But I still want my flying car. Where is my flying car?
NASA doesn’t want to lasso some stupid asteroid. They want to go back to the Moon, or go to Mars! Believe me, I worked at JSC for 11 years. I left when I saw it becoming totally politicized where their only real goal was to secure funding for next year’s budget. This means groveling at the feet of whatever politician owns the purse strings. And it means repeatedly starting programs and canceling programs.
The result is they will do anything and say anything they think they must to get a budget. That lasso is around the neck of the NASA administrator.
So you get a nearly worthless Space Station designed by bureaucrats that doesn’t do anything we really needed it to do, and you get the NASA administrator saying his primary goal is to make Muslims feel good about themselves? Please let me kick your boots, just don’t cut my funding!
Of course it also means NASA cannot plan and budget more than 1 or 2 years out since both budget and priorities are constantly changing. That’s death to any real program that requires many years of planning.
It isn’t entirely NASAs fault; it’s the way the system is set up. The only way to fix it is to give NASA a fixed percent of GDP for the next 20 years and tell them to do what they think is best.
Am I the only person here who sees the birth of a new weapons system? The same technology used to put rocks into a moon orbit can be used to aim them at your enemies on earth. They would be as destructive as nuclear weapons without any of that nasty radiation and fallout.
On the plus side, at last a real motive for kicking off a true “space age” as nations hurry to acquire control over stockpiles of orbiting asteroids to provide for their national ….. defense. ( As long as everyone’s well behaved, there’s nothing to worry about. /s)
I think that there are people in NASA who want to get man back out into space — and who are both quietly and thoroughly aware of the military aspects of diverting asteroids.
There is an intriquing set of limitations for finding a suitable asteroid.
1. Size – how many are small enough to be able to move. Assuming same density, mass is proportional to the cube of the diameter, hence double the diameter, mass is 8 times greater, treble the diameter mass is 27 times greater. Difficult.
2. Must be in orbit very close to plane of earth’s orbit, else there is far too much energy needed to remove the ‘vertical’ velocity.
3. Must be in a near circular orbit. For an object in an elliptical orbit, the speed passing earth would be greater, and the more elliptical the greater the speed differential. For an object passing outside the earth, it will have to be accelerated to get up to earth’s orbital velocity, give or take a few MPH, so that a small change will make it possible to orbit the moon.
4. It will have to be sufficiently rigid that it will not be disintegrated by the force needed to change its orbit. This means that it must have a massive density to provide a gravitational force to hold it together, or it must be rigid, not a collection of rubble. It may well be a collection of rubble, but using any force on such a collection woujld be like the starting shot in snooker – hit the frame and the collection of reds scatters over the table – there is zero adherent force.
5. Thinking about the Tunguska object, this was according to Gbaikie’s quotation from Wikipaedia, about 20 m in diameter. OK assume exactly 10 m radius.
Volume of sphere = 4/3.pi.(r cubed). r cubed = 1000. 4/3 times pi = 4.18879
So volume of sphere 10 m radius is 4 188.79 cu metres. At SG of 1 this is 4 188.79 tonnes. If the Tunguska object was 12 000 to 13 000 t. So its SG would have been from 2.8 to 3.1. Quite a dense rock.
6. If the proposed asteroid has a density of about 1, and is only 10 m diameter, from the above its mass will be about 500 t. Assume 500 x 1 t chunks, each of these, depending on speed, could do quite a fair amount of damage, depending on how much is abraded when slowed by the upper atmosphere. Think moon rockets and the protective nose cap – pumice would act similarly – rigid but quickly abraded, and probably, from a 1 tonne chunk, there could be a fair bit left.
7. But if it is really rigid, and is high density, you could be looking at a 1500 t lump and there might be 500 t left when it gets through the upper atmosphere. Of course, the robot could have latched on to a 45 m diameter rock – if so, think Great Meteor Crater in Arizona! Not very nice.
Latitude says:
June 21, 2014 at 5:52 pm
David, letting a three year old drive a car is not a mistake……….
This is a negative view. I guess by this logic, we should all stay home and do nothing. What would be the point of trying, anyway?
We have to get off our collective asses and DO something.
To quote Lee Iacoca-“Speed up, slow down, or get the hell out of the way!!!!”.
Will we trip and fall? Hell yes, but so what? That is how we move forward.
I have posted solutions to this problem over my years posting on WUWT?. The apathy portrayed by most posters is sickening. It is small minded, which surprised me as I have a great deal of respect for those who have the courage to post here.
We need to source energy and minerals off planet ( where resources are virtually infinite), and leave our home pristine. It is the ultimate “green” policy.
By the way, those “three year olds” got us to the moon.
Correct spelling is : Iacocca
Carl “Bear” Bussjaeger says:
June 21, 2014 at 6:11 pm
Carl, the reason they cannot is called “money”. Simple.
Land a lunar rover/lab on the moon in a crater then look around or drill down to find the remains of the asteroid that made the crater. You can probably do that right now on Mars.
This is our first step to becoming a Type II civilization…..this is a fascinating article about Fermi’s paradox (where are all the civilizations in the universe?).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/the-fermi-paradox_b_5489415.html
“What I truly hate about this asteroid redirect mission is it being driven by NASA being so risk adverse they are unwilling to send humans past near Earth space. ”
When most of their money is going on developing a rocket that will cost billions of dollars to launch, there’s nothing much left for developing anything to put on top of that rocket. Then there are money-sinks like JWST, which is, what, 300% over budget and ten years late?
While a cool idea in a dude-ish kind of way this seems a tad reckless. We want to research the risk of asteroid impact so we drag one to earth. If (a) the path toward earth is miscalculated or (b) it goes into moon orbit but this becomes unstable and breaks down, in either case the thing could easily slam into earth.
Maybe the CAGW agenda explains this risk-taking. An asteroid impact would send up dust and gasses that would cool the climate. Plus if with a bit of luck (or calculation) it hit a major city, then it would trash the global economy, drastically cutting CO2 emissions. For warmists all their Christmasses would come at once. Maybe this is the plan.
All of which puts them in direct competition with Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources – both of which plan on identifying and capturing asteroids / comets. The big question ought to be why is NASA competiting with US businesses rather than simply contracting for the service? Note that for the record, NASA does not have the capability to do this yet either. OTOH they do have a direct tap into an endless stream of our tax dollars which neither DSI or Planetary Resources does. Cheers –
http://deepspaceindustries.com/
http://www.planetaryresources.com/
Too much to hope for that it will hit the EPA building I suppose. Still, one can but hope.
So if any of the rocks on this asteroid contain carbon will somebody try to tax it?
I guess at least it means NASA is doing something in space which is what NASA is for instead of wasting their budget on co2 nonsense pursuits.
“2011 MD is roughly 20 feet (6 meters) in size and has a remarkably low density — about the same as water”
Okay, that means that it will probably breaking up at 322000 ft and will shower the earth’s surface with fragments.
And Nasa doesn’t have a stellar track record. Murphy’s law pretty much guarantees a fail on their part.
“NASA lost its $125-million Mars Climate Orbiter because spacecraft engineers failed to convert from English to metric measurements when exchanging vital data before the craft was launched, space agency officials said Thursday.
A navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used the metric system of millimeters and meters in its calculations, while Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, which designed and built the spacecraft, provided crucial acceleration data in the English system of inches, feet and pounds.”
http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/01/news/mn-17288
Is this really the sort of thing that you want a group of bumbling idiots to undertake? After all, their mission focus has been changed to outreach rather than science.
D. Cohen says:
June 22, 2014 at 8:37 am
Oh heavens, it’s all covered in Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, my favorite SF novel and one I was afraid had to wait for moon colonies before it could be turned into a movie. (After Apollo 13 and Titanic, it’s doable now. Judy Collin’s eponymous song would help make for a wonderful opening scene.)
Oh yeah, the book. The theme is a bunch of upstart colonists rebelling from the heavy handed government in Washington, you’ve heard of it before. One of the threats to stop the gov’t military moves against them was to threaten to hurl rocks at Earth. That got laughed at, so they did, with a nice grid pattern designed to miss people.
The book was also the first place where I read about surrogate birth. When the first “test tube baby” was announced, I patiently waited to see how long it would take the media to realize the fertilized egg could have been implanted in someone else’s uterus. Took a couple weeks.
This type of exploration is where I would prefer my tax dollars going, rather than AGW.
The great irony is that showing that asteroids have resource wealth would lead to a cleaner environ for all if retrieval is engineered correctly.
Meteorites are worth good money; in addition to their target asteroid, they should lasso some smallish ones and auction them off. The ones that sell could be brought back on return shuttle trips.
Open the
pod bayeBay doors, HAL.This project brings to mind the novel “The Sparrow” by Mary Doria Russel in which a group of Jesuit priests make a spacecraft out of an asteriod to investigate music broadcasts from Alpha Centauri
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sparrow_(novel)
At the time of Apollo 11 the average age of those in the control room was 28. Now NASA is populated by folks in their late 40’s or older. And although I can’t find it, I bet the number of NASA “administrators” has climbed faster than those in public universities. NASA’s day is over; the faster we wind it down the more money we will save. Kill Orion and buy space from commercial suppliers.
Gotta love the spuds, but…
NASA trying to justify its existence. The NASA mission is over and the agency should be shut down and not be allowed to perpetuate itself. It is a gigantic rat-hole that money disappears into. The proposed asteroid mission is frivolous.
As far as a Mars mission is concerned, it would cost trillions to send an astronaut there, and this NASA admits.
Haven’t arrogant humans learned anything about fiddling with nature? First we dump unprecedented amount of CO2 into the atmosphere and now we try to pull asteroids out of orbit. Can’t they see that this will lead to “Orbit Change?” An IPOC will have to be formed to exclusively focus on the human causes of Orbit Change. No doubt they will find that Orbit Change will have only negative effects and no positive effects. Then the debate will rage on between the Orbit Change alarmists and the Orbit Change deniers who are, by the way, clearly funded by Big Space. Stop the madness now!
If I could do this in KSP, no problem for NASA.