Asteroid Mission Competition Announces Winner

Riding with Robots writes "The Planetary Society invited participants to compete for $50,000 in prizes by designing a mission to rendezvous with and 'tag' a potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid. The asteroid Apophis was used as the target for the mission design because it will come closer to Earth in 2029 than the orbit of geostationary satellites. The winning mission design is called Foresight, and calls for the use of off-the-shelf parts to undercut the price of other proposals. Here's a PDF of the winning proposal."

Comments

Interesting name...

[red star hardkore]

Apophis... Didn't he try to destroy earth with an asteroid in SG1?

Why aren't governments doing this

[Chrisq]

This is a very small spend (in terms of space missions), quite within the capability of Europe and Japan, let alone, China, Russia and the USA. By the anticipated launch date India may even have the capability. Since this very small spend, and will give us an early warning as to whether a very large project to deflect the asteroid is needed, I am surprised that an "interest group" like the planetary society are the people looking into it. Maybe their costings will give some impetus to some country to achieve it.

Re:Another Asteriod Mission

[utnapistim]

I really do wonder if it's within the scope of today's technology to take one of these asteroids and guide it into earth orbit. For instance using small nuclear devices to prod it carefully to where it should be.

I believe this to be prohibitive, not because of guiding and asteroid would be impossible, but because for a earth orbit you'd have to slow it down a lot.