NASA - NASA Completes First Internal Review of Concepts for Asteroid Redirect Mission

NASA has completed the first step toward a mission to find and capture a near-Earth asteroid, redirect it to a stable lunar orbit and send humans to study it.

In preparation for fiscal year 2014, a mission formulation review on Tuesday brought together NASA leaders from across the country to examine internal studies proposing multiple concepts and alternatives for each phase of the asteroid mission. The review assessed technical and programmatic aspects of the mission.

"At this meeting, we engaged in the critically important work of examining initial concepts to meet the goal of asteroid retrieval and exploration," said NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot, who chaired the review at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "The agency's science, technology and human exploration teams are working together to better understand near Earth asteroids, including ones potentially hazardous to our planet; demonstrate new technologies; and to send humans farther from home than ever before. I was extremely proud of the teams and the progress they have made so far. I look forward to integrating the inputs as we develop the mission concept further."

In addition to the internal reviews of concepts for the mission, managers also discussed the recently received more than 400 responses to a request for information in which industry, universities, and the public offered ideas for NASA’s asteroid initiative. The agency is evaluating those responses.

With the mission formulation review complete, agency officials now will begin integrating the most highly-rated concepts into an asteroid mission baseline concept to further develop in 2014.

The asteroid redirect mission is included in President Obama's fiscal year 2014 budget request for NASA, and leverages the agency's progress on its Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft and cutting-edge technology development. The mission is one step in NASA's strategy to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.

For more information about NASA's asteroid initiative, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative

 

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Capturing an Asteroid

By leveraging capabilities across all of NASA, the agency is developing a first-ever mission to identify, rendezvous with, capture and redirect a small asteroid into a stable orbit in the lunar vicinity, and then send humans to visit it using the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. This mission represents an unprecedented technological feat and allows NASA to affordably pursue the Administration's goal of visiting an asteroid by 2025. It raises the bar for human exploration and discovery while taking advantage of the diverse talents at NASA. This image represents a notional spacecraft with its asteroid capture mechanism deployed.

Image Credit: NASA/Advanced Concepts Lab

NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com

ESA Portal: Lost asteroid rediscovered with a little help from ESA

Asteroid 2008SE85

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Animation of asteroid 2008SE85, moving between the stars. The images were tracked on the asteroid, thus the stars appear as small trails. 

Credits: ESA/E. Schwab

A potentially hazardous asteroid once found but then lost has been rediscovered and its orbit confirmed by a determined amateur astronomer working with ESA’s space hazards programme. The half-kilometre object will not threaten Earth anytime soon.

Amateur astronomer Erwin Schwab, from Germany, conducted his asteroid hunt in September during a regular observation slot at ESA’s Optical Ground Station in Tenerife, Spain, sponsored by the Agency’s Space Situational Awareness programme.

He was determined to rediscover the object, known by its catalogue name as 2008SE85.

Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2008SE85 was discovered in September 2008 by the Catalina Sky Survey, and observed by a few observatories to October 2008.  

Asteroid considered lost

Since then, however, nobody had observed the object and predictions for its current position had become so inaccurate that the object was considered to be ‘lost’.

 Orbit of 2008SE85

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The asteroid takes about two years to circle the Sun. The next close approach to our planet will be on 29 March 2013, to within a safe distance of about 15 million km, or about a tenth of the distance to the Sun. A much closer passage is predicted for 2098, when the asteroid will fly by at about 6 million km. This is twice the distance it was predicted to have before its re-discovery. 

Credits: ESA/Deimos

 Erwin planned his observing sequence to look for the object within the area of uncertainty of its predicted position. After only a few hours, he found it about 2° – four times the apparent size of the Moon – away from its predicted position.

“I found the object on the evening of Saturday, 15 September, while checking the images on my computer,” says Erwin.

“I then saw it again at 01:30 on Sunday morning – and that was my birthday! It was one of the nicest birthday presents.”
 

These new observations of the roughly 500 m-diameter asteroid will allow a much more accurate determination of its orbit and help confirm that it will not be a threat to Earth anytime soon.

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids approach Earth closer than about 7 million km; about 1300 are known.

When a new asteroid is discovered, follow-up observations must be done within a few hours and then days to ensure it is not subsequently lost.
 

USA-based Minor Planet Center acknowledges the find

Asteroid position measurements are collected from observers worldwide by the US-based Minor Planet Center, which acknowledged the rediscovery of 2008SE85 by releasing a Minor Planet Electronic Circular announcing the new observations.

 1m telescope at ESA's Optical Ground Station

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OGS telescope 

Credits: ESA

"These observations were part of the strong collaboration that we have with a number of experienced backyard observers,” says Detlef Koschny, Head of the Near-Earth Object segment of ESA’s Space Situational Awareness programme. "It’s not the first time our collaboration with amateurs has scored such a success. Members of the Teide Observatory Tenerife Asteroid Survey started by Matthias Busch from Heppenheim, Germany, discovered two new near-Earth objects during the last year while working with our observing programme."
  Contact

ESA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com