NASA officials discussed latest progress and new opportunities in the
agency's Asteroid Initiative in a March 26 forum with members of the
aerospace industry, academia and space enthusiasts. The forum followed a
March 21
Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) calling for additional mission concept studies led outside of NASA, with $6 million in potential awards.
NASA’s Asteroid Initiative is comprised of an Asteroid Grand
Challenge (AGC) to develop new partnerships and collaborations to
accelerate NASA’s existing planetary defense work, and a mission to
capture and redirect an asteroid and visit it with astronauts to collect
samples.
NASA refers to the latter effort to identify, redirect and send
astronauts to explore an asteroid as the "Asteroid Redirect Mission"
(ARM). This mission has three major elements: target identification,
characterization and selection; a robotic mission to capture and
redirect the selected asteroid into a stable orbit above the moon; and a
crewed mission segment in which astronauts in the Orion spacecraft
launched aboard the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket will rendezvous
with the captured asteroid, conduct spacewalks to collect samples from
it, and return them to the Earth for analysis.
"Our Asteroid Initiative is part of a stepping stone approach focused
on meeting the President’s bold challenge of sending humans to Mars in
the 2030s," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "The Asteroid
Redirect Mission will help us develop technologies, including solar
electric propulsion, needed for future deep space missions; and the
Grand Challenge includes enhanced Near Earth Object (NEO) detection and
characterization, which will extend our understanding of NEO threats
while providing additional opportunities for investigation of asteroids
and demonstrations of technologies and capabilities."
Following Bolden's welcome remarks, astronaut Karen Nyberg, who
recently completed a six-month stay aboard the International Space
Station, stressed the importance of the space station as a feat of
international collaboration and a cornerstone for future, farther
exploration into space.
"I know everybody here at NASA is extremely excited to hear your
ideas on how we can go forward with the Asteroid Initiative with the
ultimate goal of taking us – the world population – farther into the
solar system," said Nyberg
Mission Concept Study Updates
n a six-panel lineup, leading NASA experts described ongoing concept
studies for the Asteroid Redirect Mission, starting with near-Earth
object observation efforts to identify viable candidates for the
mission. Mission concept leads Brian Muirhead of NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) and Dan Mazanek of NASA's Langley Research Center
explained the leading asteroid capture concepts. One would use an
inflatable bag to envelop a small, free-flying asteroid.
In both cases, the target asteroid would already be on a trajectory
which comes near the Earth-moon system. A redirect vehicle powered by
advanced solar-electric propulsion would use thrusters to slowly push
the asteroid to a new position: a distant retrograde lunar orbit. Both
concepts would also demonstrate basic planetary defense techniques to
determine if they could be used to defend the planet in the case of a
potential catastrophic asteroid collision with Earth.
Once in a stable lunar orbit, NASA would send astronauts aboard the
Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft to visit the asteroid. This
unprecedented mission would take humans farther into deep space than
ever before.
In both cases, the target asteroid would already be on a trajectory
which comes near the Earth-moon system. A redirect vehicle powered by
advanced solar-electric propulsion would use thrusters to slowly push
the asteroid to a new position: a distant retrograde lunar orbit. Both
concepts would also demonstrate basic planetary defense techniques to
determine if they could be used to defend the planet in the case of a
potential catastrophic asteroid collision with Earth.
Once in a stable lunar orbit, NASA would send astronauts aboard the
Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft to visit the asteroid. This
unprecedented mission would take humans farther into deep space than
ever before.
Opportunities for Involvement
A panel dedicated to the BAA opportunity featured systems experts who explained details of the
five-part solicitation. Notices
of intent for the BAA are due April 4 and proposals are due May 5.
Contracts are expected to begin July 1 and conclude Dec. 31, 2014.
Jason Kessler, the program executive for NASA’s Asteroid Grand
Challenge, highlighted current activities and announced a new
partnership with SpaceGAMBIT that will focus on how the Maker community
can engage with the challenge to find all asteroid threats to human
population and know what to do about them.
The event also featured a presentation from seventh grade students at
Dillard Drive Middle in Raleigh, N.C. The students have just begun using
Pan-STARRS data to observe known asteroids and possibly find new
near-Earth objects.
NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot concluded the event,
noting that teams working on the two Asteroid Redirect Mission concepts
have been consolidated into one team, and the agency is beginning to
assign work on the mission concepts to NASA centers in advance of a
mission concept review.
"It's pretty exciting for me to stand here and think about how far
they've come in just a year developing these capabilities to do this
mission, but also to make sure that all the things we're working on are
extensible to our real destination, which is Mars," Lightfoot said.
Lightfoot added he expects the Asteroid Redirect Mission to cost
roughly half of the roughly $2.6 billion originally estimated in the
Keck Institute for Space Studies Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study,
released in 2012.
