Official Confirms NASA Plan to Capture an Asteroid

40 Replies to “Official Confirms NASA Plan to Capture an Asteroid”

1. I like it. It would also give us the chance to take an space body, tear it up, cut it up, mess with it, without having to worry about keeping its environment safe.

2. Will the selected asteroid be chosen due to it’s proximity to Earth? size? orbital period? or composition? All of these? Since this would be a ‘test run’ with future applications in mind, proximity would be first on the list, due to cost? Most asteroid bodies we’ve visited had an accumulation of dust on the surface – we’d have to pulse the object with a laser to burn off the dust to get a good sample? Can spectroscopy be done from a distance? If so, how far away can you be?

   1. It probably will be chosen depending the amount of fuel that would require to bring it relative close to earth.

3. That’s such a great idea I wonder why nobody else thought of it before.

   1. Because SpaceX can do it Cheaper, Faster, no doubt it will need NASA infrastructure and Air Force resources, but it will not cost us taxpayer’s multiple of billions of dollars,,,,,,,,

      1. Personally I’m more than OK with my tax dollars going toward awesome research like this.

      2. Oh don’t get me wrong This is big awe-inspiring stuff, I am just for the mission to be handled by SpaceX infrastructure, F9H is coming and it’s sure to be a well made rocket. New engine is certified, I am just scared of a 100 billion dollar design to launch setup. Give Elon a Billion and the mission would be ready (hypothetically) in a year or two at most. To many hands in the Pot at NASA.

      3. That is the myth. Development time and resources increases exponentially when you decrease the time or increase your goals.

         In the end costs will spiral out of control or you have to remove functionality to get the dead-lines.

         The reason is that the costs and amount of work are always in the beginning underestimated. And SpaceX is actually lucky, it does not have to do as many R&D costs to invent new technology and techniques because a lot of their knowledge comes from NASA, ESA and the Russians.

         As SpaceX will grow, more and more people will try to get their bank account filled with money intended for development. Just look around you how small successful companies became the very monster as they were fighting against. Look what happened to FaceBook and Google.

4. Another NASA boondoggle.
   An attempt to find missions for the SLS porkbarrel and the Orion capsule. Sen Nelson and congress use NASA as a jobs program to get votes for re-election, not as a space program.

   Cut the expensive SLS/Orion turkey and use some of the $ for NASA space science. Use a DARPA approach that worked so well for self-driving cars, etc. and offer prizes to the 2 or 3 best detailed feasible proposals for sampling and minutely deflecting NEOs as a proof of concept. Fund 2 winners to fly missions using SpaceX launch vehicles. They need not be manned, but if follow on missions benefit from in situ scientists, use the Dragon capsule with Bigelow inflatable tab modules. Stop the insanity.

   1. As much as I hate to say it, I have to agree. Why should fly to the moon to practice techniques we could practice in LEO? And why should we tug a rock all the way to the moon and sent people to study it when a robotic probe could likely accomplish the same science? Hell, if we want people to study the asteroid, we could park it in LEO and study it within the protection of the Van Allen belts…

      1. We’ve been studying asteroids for decades through meteorites.

         This is a dumb idea that proves we’re NOT “smarter than the dinosaurs” .
         That money would be better spent on worthy NASA projects recently de-funded by budget cuts.

      2. I’ll take terrestrial planet finder for $6 billion, please, Alex….

5. IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR ASTEROID ALIVE AGAIN PUT $6 BILLION IN UNMARKED BILLS IN A BRIEFCASE AND WAIT FOR OUR CALL. DON’T CALL THE COPS AND NO TRICKS!

   1. LEAVE IT AT MOUNT SHARP, MARS AND DON’T LOOK BACK! OUR COURIER IS PACKING A DRILL AND A LASER!

   2. No tricks , or your office and the asteroid will meet each other Kinetically, BOOM BOOM BOOM.
      Also the Chinese better start devaluing the yuan, or ELSE.

      1. Or US had better start devaluing the dollar by running up debts instead of being market competitive. China is both building a financed society and market dominance, US is neither.

6. Every time I see one of these stories about astronauts visiting an asteroid in the next 8 or 12 years, I’m driven to ask the same question: “What asteroid?” There is no known asteroid that satisfactorily meets the mission criteria.

   1. The putative rocks designated for this mission lie mostly undiscovered. Too small to be seen unless they’re flying over Russia. Job one as you surmise will be to survey and find them. But these are details that get in the way of this fantasy mission to justify SLS and Orion.

   2. But that’s exactly what we’re going to be spending $100 million on: finding a suitable rock.

   3. I bet that is is going to be a tiny asteroid that is not going to capturer the public imagination. The majority of the public probably won’t even know that the US launched a rocket to a tiny pebble.

7. There must be other scientific goals to achieve other than this asteroid catching plan ..

   1. Name them, else you are proposing the fallacy of False choice.

8. First Iraq for oil, now spaceraq for minerals. At least we are consistent.

9. NASA rocks!

   1. No, orbital rocks.

10. Sort of a cheat, since the main idea with the NEO mission wasn’t to test low gravity exploration (though handy if starting with landing on Mars moons) but to develop technology for making long term, trans-lunar missions. It is doubtful if it will “accelerate” the missions since these objects may be as rare for a catch mission as the direct-NEO objects were. It is duly noted that the official is correct: “potentially quicker”.

    That said, current non-governmental plans of a Mars encounter may take up the slack. And it plays well with the asteroid deflection work, as well as Mars moon missions.

    Not described here but elsewhere is that at the same time the administration has postponed indefinitely visiting the Moon and/or a Moon EM2 waystation. The later would have gone hand in hand with this, developing large solar propulsion engines as well as being helpful for both asteroid processing and trans-lunar missions.

    This is, because of the unnecessary deletion of potential pathways, taking the Inflexible Path.

11. This is worth some scientific research. I am not sure how practical it will be in the near future to actually mine asteroids. However, this is worthwhile before we might consider Mars, which will require much more serious power and propulsion systems than chemical rockets.

    LC

12. There is so much good & brave actions happening in our science world. From finding a way capturing a comet/asteroid. To a new laser, through telecommunication technology at the U. of Southhampton. It is the next generation to be use at the LHC or ‘any’ particle acccelerator for that matter. This new laser will have 10 thousand & more fibre laser arrays. I just am so captivated by the way these scientists come together to collaborate their brilliant minds to gravitate to one whole complete system. Bless them all.

13. Seems to me it would be far better to place an instrument package on this puppy then let it go it’s merry way. We could then hitch a ride all over the solar system and get mass quantities of information and fantastic pictures! As a matter of fact, we should “tag” all asteroids and comets that come close to us. That information would be priceless and we would also know where it is at all times.
    Just saying—-.

    1. This is one of the cool sounding ideas that can’t work in reality.
       You need the exact same amount of fuel to catch up with that asteroid as you would just take the same orbit and fly without asteroid. And it is much less complicated and requires less fuel when you do not land an an asteroid when you want to fly through the solar system.

    2. If the “tag” on these asteroids does not have its own power source it will be useless. If it does, how do you suppose we power it?
       Batteries will not last too long. Solar Power will require a big Solar panel. A little nuclear battery for each “tag”?

       1. Ah. Well, there is that. Necessity is the mother of invention. There is always a way. Just have to wrap our collective minds around the problem. Perhaps a very modern battery that holds up the best coupled with a small solar panel. The “tag” just sends out very short bursts of information, say one a day for 30 seconds or something like that. Technology will find a way. It always does.
          The point is that this would be very worth the effort. Another thing; a large payload of many hundreds of these small “tags” could be placed in geo-sync. orbit and just fly over to whatever is going buy at the time. Might take years to tag just a few, but, at least they are already up there and waiting. I have faith in our abilities to do marvelous things. What the heck, each “tag’ could be sponsored by some corporation or individual or club or ?? Even have their stupid little logo on it if they want, at extra cost of course. Heck, I’d pay for something like that.

       2. The radioisotope thermoelectric generators (basically nuclear batteries) powering the Voyager probes have been working since 1977 and are expected to continue providing electrical power for another ten years or more.

14. A human mission to an asteroid is not mind capturing. The majority is not going to be interested if you land on something that they cannot even see with a telescope because it is so small. The moon on the other hand is something different. You can point your finger at it ans say: “Son there are people walking on it right now.”

15. NBC news quoted the official — who spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no authorization to discuss the plan publicly — as saying the mission would “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.”

    So basically if NASA cant go to an Asteroid, then make the Asteroid come to you. Nice little cheat. But how will that help them get the necessary technology and test it for a future trip to Mars?

    NASA asked for £100 million for this. The money must be really tight. The official is right, with this approach you could certainly claim “Mission Done”, for Obama’s request for a Mission to an Asteroid without asking for too much money.

    I will not be too critical of this mission like some people here. The technology developed for capturing a 500 Ton asteroid, and bringing it to within Moons gravity well, will then be passed on to the Private Sector in their quest to mine asteroids for valuable minerals.

    I do think it would be better though if they could bring the Asteroid to Low Earth Orbit, and then once NASA its done with its own experiments. It can let other come in and test heir asteroid mining technology, as well as technology for bringing those minerals down to Earths surface.

16. Screw this. On to Mars.

17. There is a private company – Planetary Resources (http://www.planetaryresources.com/) that is already working on the same idea. It will be interesting to see who gets their asteroid first.

18. I’m sure no one in the government considered how easily this will be weaponized.

    1. 1. Any asteroid small enough to be bagged would be too small to survive re-entry.

       2. Such an object would be rather easy to spot once in LEO.

       3. It would be cheaper to use existing attack methods.

19. 1. Land On Asteroid, establish mining facility.

    2. Use mined resources to build new spacecraft in orbit. Make them modular and install whatever electronics/propulsion/power/etc systems are needed.

    3. ?????

    4. Profit!

Comments are closed.