Capturing an Asteroid: How NASA Could Do It

[Buster's Uncle]

Capturing an Asteroid: How NASA Could Do It
By Mike Wall | SPACE.com – 1 hr 35 mins ago...

An artist's illustration of an asteroid retrieval spacecraft capturing a 500-ton asteroid that is about 7 meters wide.

NASA's bold plan to drag an asteroid into orbit around the moon may sound like science fiction, but it's achievable with current technology, experts say.

President Barack Obama's 2014 federal budget request, which will be unveiled today (April 10), likely includes about $100 million for NASA to jump-start an asteroid-capture mission, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) said last week.

The plan aims to place a roughly 23-foot-wide (7 meters) space rock into a stable lunar orbit, where astronauts could begin visiting it as soon as 2021 using NASA's Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule, Nelson said.

While challenging, the mission is definitely doable, said Chris Lewicki, president and chief engineer of billionaire-backed asteroid-mining firm Planetary Resources. [NASA's Asteroid-Capture Plan (Video)]

"Return of a near-Earth asteroid of this size would require today’s largest launch vehicles and today’s most efficient propulsion systems in order to achieve the mission," Lewicki, who served as flight director for NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers and surface mission manager for the agency's Phoenix Mars lander, wrote in a blog post Sunday (April 7).

"Even so, capturing and transporting a small asteroid should be a fairly straightforward affair," Lewicki added. "Mission cost and complexity are likely on par with missions like the [$2.5 billion] Curiosity Mars rover."



Spurring solar system exploration

NASA's idea is similar to one proposed last year by scientists based at Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies in Pasadena.

The Keck study estimated that a robotic spacecraft could drag a 23-foot near-Earth asteroid (NEA) — which would likely weigh about 500 tons — into a high lunar orbit for $2.6 billion. The returns on this initial investment are potentially huge, the researchers said.

"Experience gained via human expeditions to the small returned NEA would transfer directly to follow-on international expeditions beyond the Earth-moon system: to other near-Earth asteroids, [the Mars moons] Phobos and Deimos, Mars and potentially someday to the main asteroid belt," the Keck team wrote in a feasibility study of their plan.

The mission would also help develop asteroid-mining technology, advocates say, and advance scientists' understanding of how our solar system took shape more than 4.5 billion years ago.

Asteroids "probably represent samples of the earliest matter that was made available to form our solar system and our Earth," Caltech's Paul Dimotakis, a member of the Keck study team, told SPACE.com in February.

"We learned a lot about the moon by analyzing the moon rocks that Apollo astronauts brought back," he added. [NASA's 17 Apollo Moon Missions in Pictures]



A challenging mission

Unmanned probes have successfully rendezvoused with asteroids in deep space multiple times. Japan's Hayabusa craft even snagged pieces of the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa in 2005, sending them back to our planet for study.

But bagging an entire asteroid and dragging it to our neck of the cosmic woods is unprecedented, and it presents several daunting challenges.

For example, the target asteroid will be spinning, which doesn't make for a smooth ride to lunar orbit. After the spacecraft captures the asteroid and brings it into a hold of sorts, the space rock will have to be de-spun, likely with thrusters, Dimotakis said.

"You might use reaction jets to take out most of it [the spin]," he said. "You would give you yourself a lot of time to do this, because there's no second chance in any of this."

Further, bringing the asteroid onboard greatly increases the spacecraft's mass, making propulsion and navigation much more difficult. And precise navigation will definitely be required to deliver the space rock to its desired orbit, Dimotakis said (though he also stressed that any asteroid chosen would pose no danger to humanity even if it somehow struck our planet).

But ion thrusters like the ones powering NASA's Dawn mission to the huge asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres should be muscular enough to make the journey, likely taking a few years to reach the asteroid and somewhat longer to come back. And the asteroid-laden probe could probably still be guided with great care, he added.

"My guess is that all of these are not insurmountable challenges, and you would be able to calibrate yourself after you snagged it and adjust your controls," Dimotakis said.



Choosing a target

Perhaps the biggest challenge of the entire mission is picking a suitable space rock to retrieve, Lewicki wrote in his blog post.

The Keck study recommends going after a carbonaceous asteroid packed full of water and other volatiles. Carbonaceous asteroids can be very dark, and it's tough to spot and characterize a 23-foot asteroid in the vast depths of space whatever its color.

So both Lewicki and Dimotakis stressed the importance of searching for potential asteroid targets sooner rather than later. Planetary Resources plans to begin launching a line of small prospecting space telescopes in 2014 or 2015, and these "Arkyd-100" craft could aid NASA's mission, Lewicki wrote.

Dimotakis, for his part, is engaged in a follow-up to the Keck study that's looking for potential targets in observations made by current telescopes.

"We are developing software in collaboration with JPL [NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory] that is going to exploit the observational digital record and essentially flag things that could be of interest and might be in this class," he said. "This has never happened before."

Still, NASA should make sure that mission scientists and engineers don't just sit on their hands until an asteroid selection is made, he added.

It's important "to start developing the spacecraft before you even know where you're going," Dimotakis said. "If you do these things in parallel, then the mission timeline shrinks."

http://news.yahoo.com/capturing-asteroid-nasa-could-120355038.html

[Buster's Uncle]

NASA to Unveil 2014 Budget Request, Asteroid Lasso Plan Today
By Mike Wall | SPACE.com – 1 hr 39 mins ago...


NASA's funding outlook for the next year will be revealed today (April 10), when President Barack Obama releases his 2014 federal budget request.

A boost over the $17.7 billion allocated to the space agency in last year's request would be a surprise in these tough fiscal times. But NASA is expected to receive $100 million to jump-start a bold asteroid-capture mission, which would drag a 500-ton space rock near the moon for research and exploration purposes.

"NASA is in the planning stages of an innovative mission to accomplish the president's challenge of sending humans to visit an asteroid by 2025 in a more cost-effective and potentially quicker time frame than under other scenarios," a senior administration official told SPACE.com.

"This mission would combine the best of NASA's asteroid identification, technology development and human exploration efforts to capture and redirect a small asteroid to just beyond the moon to set up a human mission using existing resources and equipment, including the heavy-lift rocket and deep-space capsule that have been under development for several years," the official added, referring to NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft. [NASA's Asteroid-Capture Plan (Video)]

U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) said last week that the proposed mission aims to get astronauts to the captured space rock by 2021, which is also the year that SLS and Orion are scheduled to begin carrying crews.

The overall cost of the robotic asteroid-retrieval mission — not including the astronaut visit — is estimated at about $2.6 billion, according to a feasibility study led by Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies that was published last year.



The 2014 budget request follows closely on the heels of sequestration, which on March 1 imposed a broad 5-percent cut on many federal agencies, including NASA. Sequestration and several other small cuts have reduced the space agency's actual 2013 budget to around $16.6 billion, so NASA is now looking for ways to trim costs.

NASA chief Charles Bolden has said that SLS, the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope and the commercial crew program are top agency priorities, so they may not be affected much by the cuts. NASA's planetary science program, on the other hand, may have to cough up a relativately large share.

Planetary science also suffered in last year's federal budget request, which cut the robotic exploration program by about 20 percent while keeping NASA's overall top line pretty much flat.

Bolden will discuss NASA's 2014 budget during a White House press conference today at 1:30 p.m. EDT  (1730 GMT) and a NASA teleconference today at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT).

You can follow the NASA 2014 budget briefings live on SPACE.com, courtest of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and NASA TV.

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-unveil-2014-budget-request-asteroid-lasso-plan-120400437.html

[Unorthodox]

I'm still not sold on this whole asteroid mining business.  I just don't see how it makes any sense, financially.  The only way it makes sense is to mine the material to construct new things in space so that you don't have to launch everything.  That requires a ton of infrastructure to be blasted up there to refine the mined materials...

It's just such a huge ground floor investment. 

[Buster's Uncle]

If you can keep the expenses from getting astronomical, the profits ought to be - iron ore is expensive, and we're talking about a LOT of ore.  If you can hack the delivery, it can be refined fairly cheaply.

[Unorthodox]

That's just it, there's no way to get the stuff back to the surface economically.  Current tech, you're looking at around $10 mil/ton in cost to send a vehicle up to recover the ore (the only current tech to get it back safely). 

Current ore prices would never support that in anyone's wildest dreams.  Now, it WOULD be cheaper to use that ore in space than to blast new equivalent weight to space, but you have to haul up all the equipment for refining and fabricating plus the people, food, air, water, etc.  Not to mention energy costs of refining/fabricating. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Refining is largely a matter of the Sun, a big concave mirror, and spin the molten mass to separate out the slag...

[gwillybj]

Attach some thrusters, aim it at the earth, achieve the proper safe entry velocity, add some parachutes for the descent, and plop the thing down somewhere outside Pittsburgh or Allentown.

[Buster's Uncle]

That might be the way to go at that.

[Unorthodox]

I'd like to see the parachutes that are going to safely lower several hundred tons of rock.  If we're insisting on plopping it down somewhere, make it Washington DC. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Obama Seeks $17.7 Billion for NASA to Lasso Asteroid, Explore Space
By Tariq Malik | SPACE.com – 20 hrs ago...


NASA unveiled a $17.7 billion spending plan for 2014 today (April 10) that continues major ongoing space exploration projects, while including funds to kick-start an audacious new mission to capture a small asteroid and park it near the moon so astronauts can explore it by 2025.

The proposed NASA budget is part of President Barack Obama's 2014 federal budget request and would restore the U.S. space agency's funding back near its 2013 levels. The request is about $50 million less than NASA's 2013 budget but would restore deep cuts from sequestration, leaving the agency with a roughly $1 billion increase from the $16.6 billion budget actually received for 2013.

NASA's plan to send a robotic spacecraft to lasso an asteroid and tow it to the moon is a stand-out item in the 2014 budget request. The goal is to capture an asteroid and bring it closer to Earth so that a manned mission can explore the space rock by 2025 — a major U.S. spaceflight goal set by Obama in 2010. [NASA's 2014 Budget Explained in Photos]

"We are developing a first-ever mission to identify, capture and relocate and asteroid," NASA chief Charles Bolden said in a statement. "This mission represents an unprecedented technological feat that will lead to new scientific discoveries and technological capabilities and help protect our home planet. This asteroid initiative brings together the best of NASA’s science, technology and human exploration efforts to achieve the president’s goal of sending humans to an asteroid by 2025."



How to catch an asteroid

NASA's 2014 budget sets aside a $78 million down payment for the asteroid-capture mission, as well as additional funds to search for the candidate space rock for the initial rendezvous and capture, bringing the total funding for the project to about $105 million in 2014.

In all, NASA could spend up to $2.6 billion on the asteroid-capture mission through 2025, according to a study conducted by scientists with Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies in Pasadena last year. That study reviewed the feasibility of robotically capturing a 500-ton asteroid about 23 feet (7 meters) wide and placing it in orbit near the moon by 2025.

Bolden said NASA's new mega-rocket, the Space Launch System, and its Orion deep-space capsule would be used for the manned portions of the asteroid capture mission. The agency will also "develop new technologies like solar electric propulsion and laser communications -- all critical components of deep space exploration."

The Space Launch System and Orion capsule are part of NASA's Exploration Systems division, which is funded at $2.7 billion in 2014 in the new budget, down from $3 billion last year.

In addition to the asteroid mission, NASA's 2014 budget includes continued funding for the International Space Station, as well as increased support for private space taxis, which the space agency plans to rely on to launch American astronauts to the space station now that its shuttle fleet is retired. Commercial spaceflight funding in 2014 is pegged at $821.4 million, just over twice the amount received in the 2013 request.



Planetary science, astrophysics and Earth

NASA's planetary science projects, which took a significant funding hit last year, would stay at a $1.2 billion level in 2014 (down from $1.5 billion in 2012) under the new budget request. Astrophysics funding would dip slightly to $642.3 million (down from $648.4 million last year).

Bolden said the planetary science budget will allow NASA to continue operating its many spacecraft exploring planets across the solar system, including the flagship Mars rover Curiosity and its smaller, older cousin Opportunity. Future Mars missions, such as the Maven orbiter launching later this year, new Insight Mars lander launching in 2016 and next Mars rover launching in 2020 will also be funded, he added.

Earth science and space weather funding, however, would rise in 2014 in the new budget, with NASA seeking $1.84 billion for Earth science missions (up from $1.75 billion) to revamp the agency's long-lived Landsat Earth-monitoring satellite constellation and develop new climate sensors. The space agency's Heliosphysics division, which overseas space weather and sun-monitoring missions, would rise to $653.7 million in 2014, up from $644.9 million last year.

NASA's next major space observatory, the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, will continue under the 2014 budget request, receiving about $658.2 million. The observatory is due to launch in 2018 and serve as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, which will also receive continued funding in the 2014 request.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-seeks-17-7-billion-nasa-lasso-asteroid-184029986.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Inside NASA's Plan to Catch an Asteroid (Bruce Willis Not Required)
By Mike Wall | SPACE.com – 16 hrs ago...

This asteroid mission brings together the best of NASA's science, technology and human exploration efforts to achieve the President's goals faster and at a lower cost to taxpayers than continuing with business as usual.

NASA's newly unveiled asteroid-capture plan is still in its early stages, but some details are already emerging about how the audacious mission might work.

President Barack Obama's 2014 federal budget request, which was released Wednesday (April 10), gives NASA $105 million to jump-start a program that would snag an asteroid and park it near the moon. Astronauts would then visit the space rock using the agency's Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule, perhaps as early as 2021.

"This mission represents an unprecedented technological feat that will lead to new scientific discoveries and technological capabilities and help protect our home planet," NASA chief Charles Bolden said in a statement. [NASA's Asteroid-Capture Mission: How It Works (Images)]



The space agency is still working out how exactly to pull off the mission, which officials are calling the "Asteroid Initiative" or "Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization Mission" at the moment. But a few things are already clear.

For starters, the probe that will chase down and capture the 25-foot (8 meters) or so asteroid will be unmanned. And it will be powered by solar electric propulsion, which generates thrust by accelerating charged particles called ions.

Ion thrusters have been used on other NASA probes, including Dawn, which recently spent a year orbiting the huge asteroid Vesta before departing for the dwarf planet Ceres. But engineers will need to develop an advanced version for the Asteroid Initiative craft, since it will be towing a 500-ton space rock over millions of miles.

"This mission accelerates our technology development activities in high-powered solar electric propulsion," Michael Gazarik, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Technology, said in a statement.

Still, it may take several years for the probe to meet up with the asteroid. The spacecraft will then envelop the space rock with a bag of sorts, as a new video animation of NASA's Asteroid Initiative mission depicts, and de-spin the rock, likely using thrusters.

The asteroid will then be towed to a "stable orbit in the Earth-moon system where astronauts can visit and explore it," NASA officials wrote in a mission description Wednesday.



These visits will be made possible by Orion and the Space Launch System, which are slated to begin flying crews together by 2021. The NASA animation shows astronauts aboard Orion meeting up with the space rock, which the retrieval probe is still holding onto.

In the video, the astronauts spacewalk their way over to the asteroid, accessing it by unwrapping a small section of the bag. They grab some pieces using a hammer and other tools, then come home with the samples in an ocean splashdown.

The overall asteroid-retrieval idea is similar to one proposed by researchers based at Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies in Pasadena. In a feasibility study published last year, the Keck team estimated the total cost of robotic capture and return at $2.6 billion.

NASA hasn't released its own cost estimates yet, but agency officials think they can get it done for less than that.

"The Keck study didn't take into account all the activities we already have going on in our base, so we wouldn't need $2.6 billion in new money," NASA chief financial officer Elizabeth Robinson said during a press conference Wednesday.

The Keck team also focused on grabbing a carbonaceous chondrite, she added. These asteroids are compositionally diverse, full of complex organic molecules, metals and volatile materials like water.

But carbonaceous chondrites also tend to be found farther away than other types of near-Earth asteroids, Robinson said, making their retrieval more time-consuming and expensive. At this point, NASA isn't so particular about the space rock it hopes to target.

"For those two reasons, we think that the price is likely to come in — of new money, new investment — at below that [$2.6 billion]," Robinson said.

http://news.yahoo.com/inside-nasas-plan-catch-asteroid-bruce-willis-not-224929406.html

[Buster's Uncle]

NASA unveils plan to catch asteroid as step to Mars flight
By Irene Klotz | Reuters – 14 hrs ago...


CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - President Barack Obama wants NASA to start work on finding a small asteroid that could be shifted into an orbit near the moon and used by astronauts as a stepping-stone for an eventual mission to Mars, agency officials said on Wednesday.

The project, which envisions that astronauts could visit such an asteroid as early as 2021, is included in Obama's $17.7 billion spending plan for the U.S. space agency for the 2014 fiscal year.

It is intended as an expansion of existing initiatives to find asteroids that may be on a collision course with Earth, and preparations for a human expedition to Mars in the 2030s.

"This mission allows us to better develop our technology and systems to explore farther than we've ever been before - to an asteroid and to Mars - places that humanity has dreamed about … but has had no hope of ever attaining," NASA administrator Charles Bolden told reporters during a conference call.

"We're on the threshold of being able to tell my kids and my grandkids that we're almost there."

In 2010, Obama proposed that NASA follow the International Space Station program with a human mission to an asteroid by 2025. The agency has been developing a heavy-lift rocket and deep-space capsule capable of carrying astronauts beyond the station's 250-mile (400-km) high orbit.

The system would be capable of traveling to the moon, asteroids and eventually to Mars, the long-term goal of the U.S. human space program.

"I think the asteroid-retrieval mission lays out a place for us to go," Kennedy Space Center director Bob Cabana told reporters in a separate conference call.

"It does everything that needs to be done as far as developing the technologies and the skills that we need for exploration beyond planet Earth."

Obama's 2014 spending plan proposes $105 million to start work on the new mission, which entails finding a 23- to 33-foot (7 to 10-meter) wide asteroid and robotically towing or pushing it toward Earth so it ends up in a stable orbit near the moon.

Astronauts aboard an Orion capsule would then blast off, land on the asteroid and bring back soil and rock samples for analysis.

"The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars," U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, told reporters last week.

Obama's budget proposal calls for a doubling of the $20 million NASA currently spends hunting and tracking asteroids; adding $38 million to speed development of a solar electric propulsion system that would be used to move an asteroid; $40 million for work on rendezvous and capture technologies; and $7 million for hazard-avoidance systems.

BILLION-DOLLAR PRICE-TAG?

NASA has not yet estimated the total cost of the mission, but expects it to be less than the $2.65 billion estimated last year by the California Institute of Technology's Keck Institute for Space Studies.

"We do not think at this point that it will be that expensive," NASA Chief Financial Officer Elizabeth Robinson told Reuters.

The Keck-led "Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study" proposed relocating a 500-ton asteroid closer to Earth to give astronauts a "unique, meaningful and affordable" destination in the next decade, meeting Obama's deadline.

Robinson said Keck's cost estimate did not take into account projects already under way at NASA and proposed retrieving a type of asteroid that orbits farther away which would require a longer and more expensive mission.

NASA also would look to partner with fledging space mining companies, such as startups Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, as well as agencies interested in planetary defense.

"Obviously we're looking all sorts of interests in this asteroid mission in terms of the kinds of scientific and industrial uses that could be spawned from it," Robinson said.

Interest in potentially threatening asteroids sky-rocketed after a small asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia on February 15, shattering windows and damaging buildings. About 1,500 people were injured by flying glass and debris.

The same day another larger asteroid passed about 17,200 miles from Earth - closer than the television and communication satellites that ring the planet.

The incidents had created an imperative "to develop techniques and technology that will help deter or to keep an asteroid or other type of body from impacting Earth," Bolden said.

"One of the serendipitous results from this (asteroid-retrieval) flight we hope will be the demonstration of a capability to move an asteroid, to deflect it ever so slightly."

Obama is also requesting $822 million to support efforts to develop commercial space taxis in hopes of breaking Russia's monopoly on crew transportation to the space station by 2017. The United States has been unable to fly astronauts since it retired its space shuttle fleet in 2011.

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-unveils-plan-catch-asteroid-step-mars-flight-000726897--business.html