A manned mission to an asteroid sounds, on first hearing, like a true deep-space venture, and in the days when we thought of the asteroids as largely confined to a belt between Mars and Jupiter, so it would have been depicted. But today we know that a large population of near-Earth objects (NEOs) is out there, close enough to make one of them the most obvious target for a mission beyond the Earth-Moon system. Moreover, they’re a necessary target given our need to understand their composition in case we ever have to change an asteroid trajectory.
Even so, you don’t send a human team to a completely unknown destination, which is why robotic asteroid exploration continues to loom large. Two missions — Japan’s Hayabusa and NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) — have actually orbited and landed on an asteroid. Now the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University is proposing a follow-on to the NEAR mission that would give us the needed insights for later human visits.
James Garvin is chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which is working with APL and the Johnson Space Flight Center on what the trio are calling ‘Next Gen NEAR,’ a robotic precursor mission to a near-Earth asteroid. Garvin sizes up Next Gen NEAR this way:
“We’ve learned a lot about NEOs using telescopes, Earth-based radar and two robotic missions, but we’d have to get up close and personal with a specific asteroid again, and learn much more about its environment, before we could send human explorers. But there is nothing intuitive about operating at an asteroid; in fact, sending humans to an asteroid would be one of the most challenging space missions ever. So to make sure we really understand that challenge, we’ve paired NASA experts in small-body robotic and human spaceflight with the only team in the U.S. to design, build and operate an asteroid-orbiter mission.”
Image: Artist’s impression of the Next Gen NEAR spacecraft approaching a near-Earth object, or NEO. A concept based on the successful Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission, Next Gen NEAR could serve as a robotic ‘precursor’ for a human visit to a near-Earth asteroid. Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
If Next Gen NEAR lives up to its predecessor’s standards, we’ll be doing well. NEAR was able to produce more than 160,000 images of asteroid 433 Eros, studying its geology, geophysics and composition. Next Gen NEAR would be what APL is calling a ‘workhorse of a mission’ that can launch in 2014 and return a similar windfall of data at a cost lower than a Discovery-class mission. As proposed, the spacecraft would run on commercially available subsystems, carrying lightweight scientific instruments including a surface-interaction experiment and composition-measuring spectrometers, and would be launched by a medium-class rocket.
Next Gen NEAR is an interesting and evidently cost-effective mission concept that takes us another step toward meeting the goal of a manned mission to an asteroid. The more experience the better with this kind of operation — landing on a body with infinitesimal gravity and no atmosphere is a different kind of operation than putting a payload on a planetary surface. The operations in close orbit and in contact with the surface that NEAR and Hayabusa have already demonstrated can be tuned up further in a mission like this. We’ll see how this concept is greeted at a time when expanding our knowledge of Earth-crossing asteroids is becoming a more visible priority.
When I first read that phrase “manned mission to an asteroid” I immediately thought of an astronaut planting an American flag on a tiny rock and quickly realized what a silly image that was. I would expect in any manned mission the people would never leave the vehicle–perhaps they’ll have something like those submarines with robotic arms.
What I find interesting is that going to a Near Earth Object could be a “dress rehearsal” for going to Mars. Such a mission would be the most complex since the Apollo program and give us an opportunity to test new technologies outside Earth’s orbit–and electromagnetic field.
Always a good idea to gather detailed info. on near-Earth asteroids, especially since we may one day be required to engage one (should it happen to be on a collision path with Earth). But I can’t help wonder why a human mission to an asteroid would ever be necessary, considering that, to quote Garvin from the article: “sending humans to an asteroid would be one of the most challenging space missions ever”.
I’m just confused as to what the motivation of sending humans to an asteroid is. What we really want, I believe, is to send humans to Mars — but we always have this diversionary need by politicians to interject some intermediary “stepping-stone” destination like the Moon or an Asteroid. Just because those destinations are fewer miles away, doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be any easier (or cheaper) to execute.
Putting humans on an asteroid will greatly (and unnecessarily) raise the complexity of the mission, force safety considerations into a primary role, and detract from the real science that has the potential to take place there via robotic probes.
I too don’t understand the purpose of an asteroid mission if the ultimate goal is Mars. If we do in fact need some sort of “intermediate steps”, then surely a moon mission designed to test such things as in situ materials processing, human biological reactions to long-term low gravity, and local self-sustainability (including food production and water recycling) would make far more sense.
Asteroid missions are useful as possible precursors to asteroid resource utilization, but such is definitely much farther out than a Mars mission.
My guess is that the only reason an asteroid mission is contemplated is that a) it is sexier than going back to the moon, and b) it is far cheaper than going to Mars. In other words, it is about perception and politics, and not really about building a directed, sustained, coherent space exploration program.
An asteroid mission is the most obvious and necessary astronautics target today. Mars absolutely has a great deal of value as well, but looking to the future, we can expect to be sending unmanned and manned missions to asteroids throughout the remainder of our spacefaring civilization. We may as well get started as soon as we can at building the capabilities we’ll need.
It can be argued that both learning more about asteroids, and learning how to operate at the surface of asteroids, is the only real requirement of making our civilization spacefaring: we do not really need planets, just resources, and they are to be found among the rocks. We can access them using both manned and unmanned techniques, and I have little doubt in the centuries to come we will use a mixture of both, as suits our purposes.
I am glad to finally read some material about a sensible robotic precursor mission. There were many lunar robotic missions prior to Apollo’s manned effort, and we should undertake similar preparation before sending a manned mission to a NEO.
A manned mission to an asteroid really doesn’t help you get to Mars since the radiation experienced by going to a NEO asteroid is substantially less than going to and from Mars orbit. However, a manned interplanetary vehicle appropriately mass shielded for a round trip journey to Mars orbit should also be able to safely transport humans to a NEO asteroid.
So it could be argued that manned journeys to interesting asteroids should logically take place only after the manned transportation system to Mars is developed since an appropriately mass shielded Mars vehicle would give humans access to Mars, its moons, and the NEO asteroids.
We’ll not only be landing on a very small body with and infinitesimal gravity and no atmosphere, but it will be rotating as well. I expect that may be the most difficult thing to deal with. The poles may be the only viable landing spots.
Send a robotic precursor to one of these little boulders and you eliminate any need to send humans. Why not send a couple of dozen Next Gen NEAR missions to asteroids with scientific value or which are potentially hazardous and skip the piloted stunt mission, the target of which would be selected wholly on the basis of accessibility? It’d probably cost about the same, and we’d characterize a bigger segment of the NEO population.
Next Gen NEAR sounds like a great mission, off the shelf components, quick turn around. I’d be delighted if the target were known to be a fragment from a larger body waaay back in time, one that had a complex geological, chemical history of its own.
Sending people… well sending people will gurantee a huge science return, and would be a great adventure for the whole world to follow. Thats enough for me, as I won’t be footing the bill, and I’d be delighted to follow the mission whether it is a standalone, one of a series, a precursor to a mars mission, or whatever!
Not sure if it’s about the same mission, but here’s an entertaining SETI Institute lecture about a low-cost mission to a near-Earth asteroid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI0Rf0kyFSE
We should visit as many different types of asteroids and attempt to deflect/destroy (nuke) them so that we have some solid knowledge on this before it is required.
I rather we tried this now than wait until we are threatened by a large solid iron asteroid coming straight at us.
I think Mr. Portree had it right – fleet, or swarm, the near earth asteroids to follow them in their orbits, observe them in context, and their interactions (gravitational as well as collisional).
Develop long-term survival strategies for the swarm. Simplify designs, lighten weights, lower costs. Consider launching solar orbital repair depots for robotic self repair missions, to either be targets for still-mobile but malfunctioning units, or to seek and retrieve dormant units and resurrect them.
Put it under the category of long-term survival, robotic self repair research. And gather important detailed information about composition, orbital interaction and throw in long-baseline observation opportunities. Anyone for 2+ AU baseline interferometry?
I doubt they’ll ever do a manned asteroid mission, and even less likely a mars mission. You have to remember that when they went to the moon, it was not only a show of strength over a feared communist regime, but robotic technology was very crude so unpiloted exploration was unfathomable.
It is bad strategy for NASA to admit that manned spaceflight is off the cards (they would lose staff and funding), but it is clear that humans don’t have a purpose in space any more, if you don’t accept the actual facts (remote technology outperforming humans on cost,speed,safety,reliability,duration) then observe the record, human spaceflight has reduced slowly since the sixties. The reach has reduced from the moon down to low earth orbit, even the ISS will be gone in a few years, the budgets have reduced massively in real terms, the public interest is measurably less.
A future on earth is not a bad thing, it is a wonderful prospect. There is no more conquering and colonising to be done, we cannot escape the messes we make on earth, we have to stop looking up at the stars and look at each other and find a way to live together without destroying ourselves. So what if we don’t meet some green alien, they won’t hold any enlightenment… we have to figure things out ourselves.
It makes sense to develop a NextGen NEAR out of as many off the shelf components as possible. Given that approach, a fleet could be built. Then the major problem would be launch costs. That’s where SpaceX with its low cst Falcon launchers or a competitor comes into play.
As to crewed missions to Mars. Two things could enable this to happen. First if President Obama really means it (I’m skeptical) when he says NASA’s mission is to innovate and develop technology, then VASIMIR should be at the top of the list. Given such developments, I forsee a privately funded series of Mars missions, but no earlier than the late 2030s. By the early 2030s, given Moore’s Law (sic), CAD/CAM systems should be so advanced that the design and manufacture of a series of special purpose spacecraft should be orders of magnitude less expensive than by today’s crude design methods.
Asteroids are fascinating to me because they have several very valuable properties. They are surrounded by cheap and very high quality vacuum. They contain iron and nickel of good purity. A plastic bubble, similar to the Echo satellite of 1961, exposed to nickel – iron vapor would over time become a large gas tight container. Transportation of such a container would be very cheap if one were patient. A large torus of plastic film, (think skinny bike tire) with two flat films stretched over it, one silvered, one clear and a puff of gas to produce a lens shape might make a good solar concentrator if no other energy source is available. A happy daydream , at least.
Infographic: Which Asteroids Are Swinging Closest to Earth?
By Clay Dillow
Posted 10.22.2010 at 10:21 am
Perhaps the most unsettling thing about a planet-killing asteroid is that we might never see it coming. But this infographic by Mechanicsville, Md.-based designer Zachary Vabolis helpfully visualizes which candidate near-earth objects will be swinging through Earth’s neighborhood and when they’ll be closest.
The data comes from public NASA records and tracks 17 of the closest astronomical menaces to Earth that are greater than 3,280 feet across – that is, big enough to do some catastrophic damage. The closest rock to come screaming past Earth – 1999 AN10 – is more than 3,600 feet across but won’t buzz the blue marble until 2027. The largest object on the chart, known as 433 Eros, will come around much sooner, in January of 2012.
Full article and graphic here:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-10/infographic-near-earth-objects-our-neighborhood