Slashdot Mirror
NASA Visualizes Asteroid Grab Mission
fergus07 writes "NASA has released new concept images and animations outlining one version of its plan to capture an asteroid with an unmanned craft. The scenario presented for a possible mission around the year 2025 involves literally bagging an asteroid in a huge inflatable cylinder and returning it to lunar orbit for astronauts to study."
Just like has happened over and over and over again, as soon as the next president gets into office the funding will be cut and the program cancelled. The Moon missions were a fluke of timing and circumstances, and nothing so grand is likely to be repeated anytime soon. Space is now becoming the playground of capitalism rather than the purvey of the government, and I think NASA is going to become an obscure part of the space race within a few decades.
Check out the new Slashdot iPad app
2025 ! You gotta be kidding me. How many years did it take for us to land a guy on the moon for cry'n out loud ! If it is really going to take us 8 years to put a bag around an asteroid we are soooo screwed if one of these "Mass Extinction Event's" wanders in our direction!
So we're now using 'The Secret' as our engineering method? Cool, we're using it for everything else in Govt. anyways...
Has NASA run the footage by Bruce Willis yet?
No, it won't. This is not a large asteroid. If they succeeded in vectoring it directly into the Earth, it would make a pretty light as it burned up in the atmosphere. It wouldn't even reach the ground.
Look, I know we all like growing up and making our favorite tech from video games or movies happen in real life. That being said I'm not sure if a real life version of Asteroid or Space Invaders is a good idea. I know they have some really nifty lasers they also want to test, but somehow this could all going quite badly...
You wouldn't want to be anywhere near where it hit, but agreed, the overall effect would be small and chances are it would hit a remote region where no significant damage would result.
My guess would be that the whole thing would be done on the basis of 'zero risk'. At NO point would the asteroid even transiently pass through a configuration where it would impact at all. This isn't as hard as it might sound either. Surely there is SOME orbit within the Earth/Moon system that can be achieved under that criteria. Once you are in ANY Earth/Moon orbit transitioning to other orbits safely should be relatively easy. Notice that the NASA blurb shows the asteroid in a counter-rotating distant Lunar orbit, one which would be pretty safe presumably. As long as you have a Constellation configuration with 10 or so days of transit time capability it really doesn't much matter exactly what the orbit is, you can get there.
So, I would STRONGLY suggest that this whole program is being proposed in a safe manner where impact is simply not possible. The 'tractor' capturing spacecraft could fail at any point and wherever the asteroid went would be OK.
That being said, it is true that statistically speaking any random orbit probably is more likely to lead to an impact than whatever orbit any random object is currently in. However NEOs are ALREADY generally in transient pseudo-stable orbits, so it probably doesn't make much difference. Obviously if you start pushing main-belt asteroids around its a bit different. Still, bad orbits are a very small subset of all orbits.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Relax, people. It's a small asteroid in an orbit beyond the moon. We'll have hundreds of thousands of kilometers between us and a smallish rock in space.
Return to lunar orbit for astronauts to study. I can see lunar orbit as a 'safe' alternative to earth orbit, even though this is small enough to burn up in the atmosphere. It would cut risk to other orbiting objects, and make it 'seem' safer to the masses. However, we have not had an astronaut in lunar orbit for decades. Who the fuck are these astronauts that will study it?
Silence is a state of mime.
NASA Visualizes Asteroid Grab Mission, I visualize replay of Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Houston, we have a problem.
Mounting a robotic arm and small reentry capsule on the asteroid transfer vehicle could do the same mission. I like space travel, but the main thing this video showed me is that the politics are making NASA propose dumb ideas. NASA is burdened with the politically mandated "Senate Launch System" and the apparently unkillable Orion capsule, but insufficient funds for anything else. So here we are. Personally I would kill the SLS and Orion, subcontract manned work to SpaceX, and use the funds for advanced space-related R&D.
The scenario presented for a possible mission around the year 2025 involves literally bagging an asteroid in a huge inflatable cylinder and returning it to lunar orbit for astronauts to study.
I'm kind of at a loss for why you would want to do that. Ignoring for the moment the geopolitical WMD ramifications of doing this, what advantage would there be in having people there that we cannot accomplish with robots? Sending people adds massively to the cost, complexity and danger. If we have the ability to capture the asteroid with robot we probably have the ability to analyze the asteroid with robots too. I just don't see what the gain of sending people would be other than bragging rights. Because we can isn't an adequate reason because we can send people to other more useful missions and accomplish research/exploration goals.
Agreed, what we see here is an evil plot by NASA to get more funding. They pick up an asteroid from the belt. They have it coming towards Earth, but will deliberately have the towing craft go out of control. Suddenly Bruce Willis is our only chance, and Congress will have to approve emergency spending.
God spoke to me
you have huge misconception between your ears. such a small asteroid would not reach the ground. it would not cause dangerous shock wave. it is too small. you could be anywhere on the ground and be safe
Because when you use infographics and animations to explain things these days it's much more readily assumed to be a practical solution by the masses and so they will gladly support and fund it. Just look at Hyperloop.
If you had a link to a 2000 page factual whitepaper about the same thing it would be protested and government would cancel it.
Better yet, NASA should put this on Kickstarter and give away T-Shirts and seats to watch the launch of the mission and people will willingly throw millions at the project and cut out the government tax middlemen.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
At which point the House will decide that it will only pay for this asteroid-protection plan to save the earth if equivalent cuts are made some place else. Now, the Senate ain't gonna buy that. So the asteroid will just go ahead and hit the earth, but fortunately hit someplace nobody (here) cares about. And, for some fucking incomprehensible reason, fully 90% of these asshats will be reelected the next cycle.
A pea-sized rock (or an errant bolt) travelling retrograde* in the same orbit as the ISS would be a mission-ender. Even one crossing at a very shallow angle would close so fast that by the time anyone spotted it, it would be too late.
Also bear in mind that the impactor that left a mile-wide hole in Arizona was only the size of a Greyhound bus.
The one that killed the dinosaurs was the size of Manhattan and left a crater 127 miles wide.
The object that exploded over Siberia in 1908 flattened 80 million trees and left fist sized fragments of itself over hundreds of square miles.
*at the altitude and speed the ISS orbits, mutual closing speed with a retrograde object of any mass would be around the 34,200mph mark. Or, around the same speed as an asteroid on terminal trajectory. It wouldn't be so much a hole, more an explosive impact.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
You can't say that with any certainty at all. It heavily depends on the exact composition, structure, velocity, and angle of entry. It is quite possible for a rock this size to either reach the ground or generate a fireball at an altitude that could cause some significant damage on the ground in a limited area. It is just largely moot, there's virtually no chance such a thing would happen.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Bring an asteroid into orbit is very very different from a collision course. As long as it's not experience significant atmospheric drag, the amount of angular momentum with respect to the Earth will make sure that almost any minor deviation from then on will just result in a slingshot or eccentricity because it has to be conserved. It will not suddenly plunge directly down.
Isn't science Great!!!!! We are going to get our very own second moon all thanks to science.
Jack of all trades,master of none
2025? Really ambitious, NASA... or maybe not...
Isn't 2024 about the time Planetary Resources plans to start platinum mining operations on a captured, much larger, asteroid?
If a planet has land, and land is property, the question must be posed: does an Asteroid have property, which can be owned. And who could own that? We already have companies trying to "sell" people claim to titles of property on both the moon, and mars. But I don't think that there's any basis in international law - in fact, I think that there are some treaties that BAN claiming sovereignity of the moon.
So if NASA can "own" an asteroid, (in the legal sense) - then they could "take" it, and change it's orbit. But if this asteroid belongs to "the world" (by fiat of international declaration) - then it might even be illegal for NASA to MOVE it from it's natural orbital trajectory. (in that case, it might actually be considered "LITTERING" to land a probe on another planet.) (I understand that there are some islamic scholars who have a problem with smashing probes into the moon, because the moon is a sacred object, as a signifier of the start and end of each month in their calendar - and this is also the source of some of the Moon-landing hoax conspiracy theories that are out there. . . )
Would the douchebags of the world try to challenge, in court, what NASA is trying to do with this asteroid?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
, and those same communists were launching people into space
It was because of an American remark. At least, that was what my space technology teacher told. There was a conference about space travel, which was up to then purely theoretical, at which an American guy told his Russian colleague that they were working on a space program (which was not true at that moment). This remark started the space race.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
One thing the video didn't address was the capture process. I keep wondering how this whole fly-up-and-bag-it thing would work. I find it unlikely that the rock just be sitting there waiting. It would have some rotation. If we've learned anything from recent close encounters with asteroids, it's that they are rotating on multiple axises. Even a small rock like the one in the video would have a lot of inertia to overcome in order to bring it to a stop. I doubt that little docking clamp they showed would have enough fuel to do the job.
look it up already, 7-10 meter asteroid, target of this experiment, absolutely cannot reach the ground regardless of composition, they burn up.
30 meter range is another matter, but that' is not on the table for this experiment
I saw nothing in the blurb about a specific size. Of course there's not a lot of reason to mess with larger rocks if you don't have to.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson