How to Grab an Asteroid and Park It Near Earth

[Bud Brewster]

Incredible Technology: How to Grab an Asteroid and Park It Near Earth

By Miriam Kramer, Staff Writer | March 31, 2014 05:27pm ET

NASA's plan to lasso an asteroid, bring it into a stable orbit near the moon and let astronauts visit it might sound ambitious, but the space agency is looking at two different ways to make it happen.

In one mission, a robotic probe would fly out to a small asteroid and bring the whole thing back for astronauts to explore. The other mission involves the robot bagging a boulder from a larger space rock and parking it near the moon.

Either one will help scientists work out some of technological hurdles that they could come up against while sending humans deeper into space than ever before. The new mission, first proposed in 2013, could also help researchers learn more about how to deflect a dangerous asteroid if it were on a path to Earth.

Getting to the asteroid, bringing it home and launching missions to the space rock from Earth, is no easy task, but it could serve a larger goal for NASA. By testing new technology, mission parameters and other science that hasn't yet been proved, officials with the space agency will learn more about how to accomplish the space agency's latest and greatest goal: launching astronauts to Mars.

"We really make a big deal out of this [asteroid] initiative, but you should all understand, this is a tiny, tiny piece of getting humans to Mars," NASA chief Charles Bolden said during a forum on the asteroid initiative Wednesday (March 26). "I don't want anybody to lose focus on that.

The ultimate goal of this agency right now when it comes to human spaceflight is to put humans on Mars. That's hard. That is really hard. We need a proving ground to develop some of the technologies and everything else."[/color]

[Read the whole article at the link below.]

http://www.space.com/25289-asteroid-retrieval-mission-incredible-technology.html?

(Me: I couldn't help noticing a resemblance. Just FYI, folks.)

 

[Bud Brewster]

Asteroid Abducted By Aliens! Details at 11:00

 

[2takesfrakes]

China will probably be the first country to send a manned-mission to Mars - and do so successfully - whilst NASA screws around, giving the Moon its very own, natural sattelite.

 

[HIjol]

Yeah, but...if the orbit around Earth is blown, even a teense, we are gonna need Chuck Heston to do the voice-over...again...scarycool technology, though...

 

[Bud Brewster]

Surprisingly enough, I'm sort of against manned missions to Mars.

I mean, what's the point? We spend billions of dollars, we endanger the lives of brave people, and we have to wait a year just for them to call and say. “Hey, folks! Traffic was light and we arrived safe and sound. Wish you were here!”

And if we're real lucky, our astronauts will find . . . bacteria.

Jeez, we're up to our snooze in bacteria, right here on Earth. My kitchen has a couple of million varieties, even after I clean it!

I know, I know. We want Martian bacteria. But again, why?

To prove life can evolve? The only people who don't believe that already are the folks convinced God made it all, both here and everywhere else. We're not going to solve that question with a Petri dish filled Marvin the Martian Microbe.

So far, I still don't get the point.

Okay, so maybe we should go to Mars to learn if we can establish colonies on other planets. It that it?

Again, why? If we want colonies in space, the Moon is much closer and the weather is better. No sandstorms.

Build them at the lunar North and South poles and you’ll never even have to wear sun block while your gazing up through the transparent dome at the stars. Meanwhile, the sun will obediently go 'round and 'round the horizon, providing solar power all the time.

And since there's no sandstorms, the solar panels won't blow over they way they would on Mars while they're desperately struggling to squeeze a little power out a sun that's 34 million miles further away.

Is the Moon sounding better to you yet? If not, here's more good news.

Observatories on the Moon don't have any atmosphere to peer through, and since the moon takes 28 days for each rotation, the telescopes will have long attention spans when asked to concentrate on a given star, nebulae, or galaxy.

But on Mars . . . well, not so great for observatories. Worse than Earth, actually.

So, when it comes to celestial real estate, Mars is a bad investment. It’s located in the boondocks (like northern Texas, only more so), it’s windy and cold (like Minnesota, only worse), and it’s got more bacteria than my kitchen.

Or maybe it doesn’t -- but that’s supposedly a bad thing, because we’re just itchin’ to bring back something small and alien that eats the circuits in smart phones and computers, plunging mankind back into the Dark Ages!

The Moon, however, is 142 times closer to us. Compared to Mars, it’s conveniently located to schools, hospitals, and shopping. It’s always sunny, and it has a great view of Earth if you buy property on the good side of town.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm voting for a stylish Howard Johnson on the Moon, instead of a bedbug-ridden Motel 6 on Mars.

Anybody agree?

 

[Haggis and tatties]

I just hope we are not messing with somebody's rock garden out there.

 

[Silvercrest]

Future thread for Milky Way BBS:
Solar System's Moving Rocks Finally Caught Moving
It will be followed by an amusing anecdote about how these mysterious asteroid migrations were caused by lower Terran life-forms pushing them around.

 

[ngc7293]

Let China have Mars. Besides, we have to go back to the moon so we can replace our flags.

 

[scotpens]

Let China have Mars. Besides, we have to go back to the moon so we can replace our flags.

With no atmosphere, weather, wind, erosion or decay on the moon, those flags -- and all the hardware left by the six successful Apollo landings -- are going to be there a long time.

 

[sojourner]

Let China have Mars. Besides, we have to go back to the moon so we can replace our flags.

With no atmosphere, weather, wind, erosion or decay on the moon, those flags -- and all the hardware left by the six successful Apollo landings -- are going to be there a long time.

Yeah, but those flags have been faded to white by sun exposure.

 

[Bud Brewster]

White flags on the Moon are just the right color. American has surrendered it's space program, and now it spends all it's money fighting to establish democratic governments in the Middle East.

Suddenly, going to Mars seems a lot easier and more realistic than I thought . . .

Funny idea: If we sent a crew to the Moon to bring back all the equipment and materials we left there, do you think we could make enough money to pay for the trip if we sold it on eBay?

 

[RoJoHen]

It just occurred to me that the flag on the moon is never lowered to half-staff during mourning periods. That seems like a gross oversight.

 

[Silvercrest]

Yes, and if it ever touched the ground they'd have a tough time burning it.

 

[Metryq]

And since there's no sandstorms, the solar panels won't blow over they way they would on Mars

With a surface pressure about half a percent that of Earth, I seriously doubt wind loading is a major problem on Mars. The sandstorms would be a problem, however, blocking solar arrays or scratching their lenses—on top of the greater distance you already noted. But what makes you think explorers would rely on solar? Living anywhere beyond Earth will be a continual exercise in doing things differently.

 

[2takesfrakes]

And if we're real lucky, our astronauts will find . . . bacteria.

Jeez, we're up to our snooze in bacteria, right here on Earth. My kitchen has a couple of million varieties, even after I clean it!

I know, I know. We want Martian bacteria. But again, why?

To prove life can evolve?

And if they bring that Martian-styled bacteria to earth, won't that be fun when it leaves us all dead, because spores got loose and our immune systems don't speak Martian. I seriously doubt there's anything living there, but unfortunately, life on Mars isn't dependent upon my belief system ...

 

[Dryson]

Placing an asteroid in orbit around the Moon has many promising benefits. In my opinion the most promising benefit would be astronauts building small habitat colonies of maybe ten to twenty on an asteroid along with cargo and refueling hubs tethered to the colony asteroid that would then be tethered to the Moon and deployed at around 300 to 500k kilometers from the Moon for various tests to be conducted.

The tethering system would allow cheap but effective asteroid hubs to be deployed from the Moon that would then be used for stepping off locations for satellite missions and manned missions into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or Mars.

 

[sojourner]

You can't put something in stable orbit around the moon. That's why NASA always uses Lagrange points as the recommended locations for stations near the Moon.

 

[publiusr]

You can't put something in stable orbit around the moon. That's why NASA always uses Lagrange points as the recommended locations for stations near the Moon.

They are also looking at looping, comet-like Molniya type orbits:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/30nov_highorbit/

 

[JES]

Bud Brewster: I can think of one reason to establish a colony on Mars (besides it being currently the closest thing to an Earth-like colony were going to get):

A waypoint base or base of operations to mining the asteroid belt. Whoever is enterprising enough to set up a business to mine the asteroid belt's wealth of minerals is going to be filthy rich.
I was about to say he/she wouldn't need to worry about any environmentalist getting in the way, but I guess they would have to make sure that they don't move any asteroids out of their fragile orbit, and send them tumbling to Earth, or any colonies or space stations (or causing some chain reaction that causes multiple asteroids to get bumped out the belt).

 

[publiusr]

You don't need a Mars Base for asteroid mining, although cyclers to and from Mars might give a respite. No need to fight a gravity well any more than you have to.