The Koyal Group InfoMag News: NASA prepares to capture

asteroid, drag it into Earths orbit

NASA prepares to a drag an asteroid into Earths orbit.



What is the goal for the Asteroid Redirect Mission?

Through the Asteroid Redirect Mission, NASA will identify, capture and
redirect an asteroid to a stable orbit around the moon, which astronauts
will explore in the 2020s, returning with samples. The mission is an
important early step as we learn to be more independent of Earth for
humans to explore Mars. It will be an unprecedented technological feat
that will lead to new scientific discoveries and technological capabilities,
while helping us learn to protect our home planet. The overall objectives
of the Asteroid Redirect Mission are:

Conduct a human exploration mission to an asteroid in the mid-2020s,
providing systems and operational experience required for human
exploration of Mars.
Demonstrate an advanced solar electric propulsion system, enabling
future deep-space human and robotic exploration with applicability to
the nations public and private sector space needs.
Enhance detection, tracking and characterization of Near Earth
Asteroids, enabling an overall strategy to defend our home planet.
Demonstrate basic planetary defense techniques that will inform
impact threat mitigation strategies to defend our home planet.
Pursue a target of opportunity that benefits scientific and partnership
interests, expanding our knowledge of small celestial bodies and
enabling the mining of asteroid resources for commercial and
exploration needs.

What are the requirements for the asteroid NASA hopes to capture?

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 mass less than 32 feet (10 meters) in size
into the moons orbit.

NASAs search for candidate asteroids for ARM is a component of the
agencys existing efforts to identify all Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that
could pose a threat to the Earth. More than 11,140 NEOs have been
discovered as of June 9. Approximately 1,483 of those have been
classified as potentially hazardous. Some of these NEOs become
potential candidates for ARM because they are in orbits very similar to
Earths and come very close to the Earth-Moon system in the early
2020s, which is required to be able to redirect the asteroid mass to be
captured into lunar orbit.

To date, nine asteroids have been identified as potential candidates for
the ARM full capture option, having favorable orbits and estimated to be
within the right size range. Sizes 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 NASAs NEO Program is finding a few additional potential
candidate asteroids every 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, such as Itokawa by the Japanese Hayabusa mission,
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
agencys Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-
Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission in 2018. High
resolution interplanetary radar is also able to image the surfaces of
asteroids that pass close to the Earth and infer the presence of large
boulders.

Where will the asteroid be redirected to reports suggest above the
Moon?

After an asteroid mass is captured, the spacecraft will redirect it to a
stable orbit around the moon called a Lunar Distant Retrograde Orbit.
Astronauts aboard an Orion spacecraft, launched from a Space Launch
System (SLS) rocket, will explore the asteroid there in the mid-2020s.
Learning to maneuver large objects utilizing the gravity fields of the
Earth and moon will be valuable capabilities for future activities.
Potentially, either mission concept might test technology and techniques
that can be applied to planetary defense if needed in the future.

How will ARM fit NASAs goal to visit Mars?

The mission provides experience in human spaceflight beyond low-
Earth orbit, building on our experiences on the International Space
Station, and testing new systems and capabilities in the proving ground
of cis-lunar space, toward the ultimate goal of a crewed mission to Mars.
ARM leverages and integrates existing programs in NASAs Science,
Space Technology, and Human Explorations and Operations to provide
an affordable and compelling opportunity to exercise our emerging
deep space exploration capabilities on the path to Mars. ARM will test
the transport of large objects using advanced high power, long life solar
electric propulsion; automated rendezvous and docking; deep space
navigation; integrated robotic and crewed vehicle stack operations in
deep space environment; and spacewalks out of Orion that will be
needed for future cis-lunar space and Mars missions.

NASAs strategy is that the ARM SEP module and spacecraft bus would
be upgradable for the first cargo missions to Mars and its moons. We
might do so by procuring these systems commercially to lower cost and
for reproducibility. Another option is to repurpose the ARM vehicle
after its first mission, as a lowest cost option for transportation. These
are among the options being studied this year.