NASA Report: How to Defend Planet From AsteroidsSPACE.com
By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer 9 hours ago
This July 23, 2011 image of the Asteroid Vesta, released by NASA/JPL, was captured by the Dawn spacecraft at a distance of 3,200 miles (5,200 kilometers). Dawn entered orbit around Vesta on July 15, and will spend a year orbiting the body. After that, the next stop on its itinerary will be an encounter with the dwarf planet Ceres. (AP Photo/ NASA/JPL)
The results of a workshop to find the best ways to find, track and deflect asteroids headed for Earth were released by NASA on Friday (Feb. 7).
NASA's Asteroid Initiative, started in 2013, includes a mission to capture a small near-Earth asteroid and drag it into a stable orbit around the moon, and a challenge to devise the best ideas for detecting and defending against potentially dangerous asteroids.
The agency put out a request for information to refine the objectives of the Asteroid Initiative, to generate other mission concepts and increase participation in the mission and planetary defense.
NASA received an enthusiastic response, including from the general public. The agency evaluated the ideas it received and chose 96 of them to explore further at a two-part workshop at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, on Sept. 30 and Nov. 20 to 22, 2013.
"We are already acting on the ideas submitted through the [request] process," NASA said in a statement.
For example, the agency reactivated the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft, now known as NEOWISE, in Sept. 2013, to look for near-Earth asteroids that could be targets for the Asteroid Redirect Mission.
The workshop report also recommended holding more forums to get citizens involved in the Asteroid Initiative and create incentives to reach milestones in the asteroid mission and grand challenge.
The Asteroid Redirect Mission aims to capture a 23- to 33-foot (7 to 10 meters) asteroid, or a 1- to 33-foot. (1 to 10 m) boulder on a space rock, then haul it into lunar orbit using an unmanned spacecraft. Astronauts could then visit the asteroid using NASA's Orion crew capsule and Space Launch System rocket, bring samples of the rock down to Earth.
The Grand Challenge seeks to identify all asteroids that could pose a threat to humanity and boost NASA's current planetary defense efforts.
As a whole, the Asteroid Initiative aims to combine NASA's efforts in human space exploration, space technology and space science to achieve the first human mission to rendezvous with asteroid material and to improve our ability to track and prevent potential asteroid impacts.
http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-report-defend-planet-asteroids-100208542.html
