Report: NASA to launch crazy asteroid-capture mission
And the space agency is soliciting ideas.
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Science Recorder | Delila James | Saturday, March 22, 2014
The folks at NASA announced today (March 22) they are offering $6 million to both the private and public sectors to supply new proposals for their asteroid-capture scheme.
The space agency said it want ideas dealing with five topics: asteroid capture systems, secondary payloads, international and national partnership opportunities, rendezvous sensor systems, and adapting commercial spacecraft buses. All proposals are to have an eye toward keeping expenses to a minimum.
“We’re in this sort of pre-formulation phase studying and gathering input, leading to a mission concept review that we’ll have in early 2015, where we’ll try and focus down to a specific concept and then go develop and implement,” Greg Williams, deputy associate administrator for policy and plans at NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said in a press release.
The goal of the asteroid-capture mission is somehow to lasso a suitable space rock and pull it into the Moon’s orbit. This would then allow astronauts to land on the asteroid for study and analysis. NASA wants to send a manned mission to the space rock by 2025, as President Obama has directed. The President has also directed NASA to send astronauts to Mars by 2030.
“We see this as an important stepping stone in our advance of human exploration beyond LEO [low-Earth oribt],” Williams added.
The asteroid capture mission is ambitious, to say the least. Some think it’s pretty hare-brained. The idea is to send a spacecraft to the chosen rock that will either nudge it or drag into a lunar orbit. Then astronauts would be able to land there and analyse its chemical composition to learn more about what the very early universe looked like.
NASA officials say they expect the mission to be a key step in plans to send astronauts to Mars.
While an ambitious project, the space agency is intent on keeping costs to a minimum and plans to seek partnerships with commercial aerospace companies to achieve its goal.
The space agency said it want ideas dealing with five topics: asteroid capture systems, secondary payloads, international and national partnership opportunities, rendezvous sensor systems, and adapting commercial spacecraft buses. All proposals are to have an eye toward keeping expenses to a minimum.
“We’re in this sort of pre-formulation phase studying and gathering input, leading to a mission concept review that we’ll have in early 2015, where we’ll try and focus down to a specific concept and then go develop and implement,” Greg Williams, deputy associate administrator for policy and plans at NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said in a press release.
The goal of the asteroid-capture mission is somehow to lasso a suitable space rock and pull it into the Moon’s orbit. This would then allow astronauts to land on the asteroid for study and analysis. NASA wants to send a manned mission to the space rock by 2025, as President Obama has directed. The President has also directed NASA to send astronauts to Mars by 2030.
“We see this as an important stepping stone in our advance of human exploration beyond LEO [low-Earth oribt],” Williams added.
The asteroid capture mission is ambitious, to say the least. Some think it’s pretty hare-brained. The idea is to send a spacecraft to the chosen rock that will either nudge it or drag into a lunar orbit. Then astronauts would be able to land there and analyse its chemical composition to learn more about what the very early universe looked like.
NASA officials say they expect the mission to be a key step in plans to send astronauts to Mars.
While an ambitious project, the space agency is intent on keeping costs to a minimum and plans to seek partnerships with commercial aerospace companies to achieve its goal.
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