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

It could be worse

[aadvancedGIR]

The asteroid could be full of highly toxic fuel.

Interesting name...

[red star hardkore]

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

Re:Interesting name...

[TypoNAM]

That was actually Anubis in Fail Safe of season five.

Re:Interesting name...

[Talderas]

No, Apophis just was going to invade Earth, bombing us back into the bronze age. Anubis was the one that used the Asteroid to try to hit Earth. Apparently he had seen all our Armageddon type movies, and the asteroid he used was mostly Naquaada, meaning the use of a nuclear weapon to divert or split the asteroid would have resulted in the asteroid becoming a huge explosion that would have likely engulfed Earth in the blast.

Re:Interesting name...

[downix]

Apophis, also called Apep, is the egyptian worldsnake, desiring to consume the sun and destroy all life. It was fought each day by the god Set, to protect the sun god Ra, as he made his way through the underworld. But yet, despite being killed every day, it continually ressurects to threaten again the next day.

Huh?

[zappepcs]

COTS - commercial off the shelf - parts is standard industry stuff. I'm wondering how this cut enough costs to be winner. What are the other people using? There is a lot of military hardware built with COTS. Does anyone have enough info on the other competitors to say why COTS undercut them?

Re:Huh?

[Kostya]

COTS means ready-made components, with very little custom parts or systems. Most gear sent into space is custom designed for the task (down to custom circuits, boards, and even processors). The Mars rovers were the first project to use COTS hardware (I believe their modems were COTS for example), and it saved a bunch compared with how they would usually build a similar system.

So yes, building this with available components and not using custom-designed circuit boards and parts could significantly save money.

Re:Huh?

[MassiveForces]

Good point, especially since "an Orbital Sciences Corporation Minotaur IV launch vehicle" doesn't sound like it would fit very well on the average shelf.

Re:Huh?

[xzaph]

Yep. In essence, the main drawback to COTS parts is the need to verify whether they'll still function within the parameters of the environment to which they're being sent. Highly temperature-sensitive circuits, for instance, would not be a good COTS part to use in a spacecraft.

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.

Great, it's done...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll let Bruce Willis know.

Another Asteriod Mission

[Esteanil]

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.

Because an easy source of raw materials in orbit would certainly make a lot of things a *lot* more interesting, considering the price of lifting such materials to orbit.

Re:Another Asteriod Mission

[TheRealMindChild]

While that sounds dandy from a I-want-to-do-the-least-work-possible approach (which I am not necessarily condemning), the consequences of another "moon" may not be all that apparent up front. Tides would certainly change, possibly affecting coastlines. Whales and such would get confused. It would start raining cats and dogs. MASS HYSTERIA!

Re:Another Asteriod Mission

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear warheads aren't really the best way to "steer" asteroids. Ask Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_deflection_strategies

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.

Re:Another Asteriod Mission

[MMC Monster]

While that sounds dandy from a I-want-to-do-the-least-work-possible approach (which I am not necessarily condemning), the consequences of another "moon" may not be all that apparent up front. Tides would certainly change, possibly affecting coastlines. Whales and such would get confused. It would start raining cats and dogs. MASS HYSTERIA! Okay. But is there any downside?

Re:Another Asteriod Mission

[icebrain]

I think the asteroid is rather small to be causing big tidal effects. It's only 200-300m or so, if I'm remembering right.

Re:Another Asteriod Mission

[Kamokazi]

But then we'll have lots of people living in massive space colonies to mine the asteroids and then will eventually feel oppressed by the people living on Earth whose souls are weighted down by gravity and give birth to a revolting faction that will develop giant robots and use psychic pilots and start many wars where they usually try to drop these colonies and asteroids onto Earth.

That or I've been watching way too much Anime.

Re:Another Asteriod Mission

[frogzilla]

"Tides would certainly change"

Just how large a body do think the author was writing about?

It could be interactive

[SgtChaireBourne]

It could be quite an interactive project, albeit not in the way intended.

Perhaps it is a typo or the authors meant to avoid confusing the PHBs with 'technical' jargon like SSH, SFTP, and HTTPS. Page 28 of the document clearly says that FTP and Telnet are used. FTP will be used for data transfer to and from the satellite and that telnet is involve in the command and control.

Looks like Lunar Lander needs to add an option for NEO Asteroid, so that the first one to get in doesn't use all the fuel on the first try...

Re:It could be interactive

[icebrain]

Perhaps it is a typo or the authors meant to avoid confusing the PHBs with 'technical' jargon like SSH, SFTP, and HTTPS I know a few of the guys that wrote this, and I'm pretty sure they aren't intending simple, easy-to-hack communications protocols. They're aerospace and mechanical engineers, not IT or network types--but I'm quite sure they know such systems need to be secure. Telnet and FTP are more recognizable to the layperson (and PHBs, and beancounters), and I guess an argument could be made that SSH and SFTP are kind of like subsets of those, in a way. Overall, they probably went with the "simple" versions to emphasize OTS stuff as opposed to a custom-designed or very specialized communications protocol. And besides, I'd expect the actual radio signals to be encrypted, maybe as a "wrapper" around the FTP/Telnet-style data.

On a side note, this was the same thing we had to do for our senior design projects last year. IMO, our concept was cooler (with implantable seismometers and explosive charges to map the interior), but their proposal is obviously a lot better and more professional.

Re:unlucky for some...

[CBob]

We're trying for Mid-Pacific impact on 13 April, but there's some remaining flight instability due to the off center mass concentrations of the projectile.

Re:I have an even better way to get to the asteroi

[joaommp]

The US military seems to be getting some practice in shooting down outworld objects...

Can we capture it?

[dl107227]

It would be nice if we could nudge it into an orbit around Earth. That way we would have a handy counterweight available for a space elevator.

Executive Summary

[Atticka]

Executive summary from the the linked PDF:

The Foresight spacecraft is a concept design for a radio tagging mission to Near Earth
Asteroid (NEO) Apophis. The spacecraft is designed to be a low-cost, low-risk, minimal
science mission in order to achieve the goal of obtaining accurate tracking information for
Apophis. The baseline spacecraft mission includes a launch from Wallops Island, Virginia on
an Orbital Sciences Corporation Minotaur IV launch vehicle. Five launch windows have
been identified spanning the years 2012 to 2014. The mission requires a chemical propulsive
transfer vehicle to perform the outbound burn to Apophis (3,600 m/s) with the Foresight
encounter spacecraft performing a portion of the Earth departure, and the Apophis capture
burn (total less than 2,400 m/s). The mass of the Foresight spacecraft is 220 kg (propulsive
transfer vehicle of 1,387 kg). The Foresight spacecraft is powered by solar arrays augmented
by rechargeable batteries; the transfer vehicle is powered by onboard batteries. The
Spacecraft has two main instruments, a multi-spectral imager and laser altimeter, which
over a span of 300 days reduces the ±3 error ellipse of Apophis' trajectory ("keyhole" or bplace
encounter) in 2029 to 6.0 kilometers by 2017. The spacecraft leverages off the shelf
technologies where possible, incorporating leaner approaches to spacecraft design. The total
cost for this mission is estimated to be $137.2 M ($94.2 M for spacecraft and instrument
development and acquisition, $21 M for operations, and $22 M for the launch vehicle).
Overall system reliability is estimated to be 90.2%. The Foresight spacecraft is a low cost
asteroid spacecraft mission that can be implemented with low risk in order to obtain detailed
information on the future orbital trajectory of Apophis.

downside to another moon

[The Queen]

Well, at the risk of getting gross (and sacrificing karma), I have to wonder how a 'second moon' would affect menstrual cycles. Twice a month? There's your downside!