NASA's ARM Will Take a Boulder From an Asteroid and Put It In Lunar Orbit

coondoggie writes NASA officials today said they have picked the specific asteroid mission and offered new details for that mission which could launch in the 2020 timeframe. Specifically, NASA's associate administrator Robert Lightfoot said the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) will rendezvous with the target asteroid, land a robotic spacecraft on the surface, grab a 4 meter or so sized boulder and begin a six-year journey to redirect the boulder into orbit around the moon for exploration by astronauts.

Comments

Just what the Moon always wanted

[databeam]

So the Moon will have its own moon now?

Re: Just what the Moon always wanted

[Firethorn]

In order to account for binary systems, I generally look at the central axis of rotation - if it's inside one of the bodies, that body is the 'primary' - IE a planet, sun, whatever. If it's outside, then it's a double system.

Re: Just what the Moon always wanted

[SQL Error]

They rotate around a common center of gravity. But that center of gravity is inside the Earth. Or to put it another way, no.

Re: Just what the Moon always wanted

[rubycodez]

No, they rotate around a barycentre which is 1710km under the Earth's surface.

Re: Just what the Moon always wanted

[FrostedWheat]

That would make the Sun and Jupiter a binary system.

Re:Astronauts are obsolete technology

[Sowelu]

Rendezvousing with asteroids is actually really tricky, especially if you want to get the same one twice. Hell with astronauts--putting this boulder somewhere that we can reach it over and over again, even just with probes, is a real big win. Especially considering how the last asteroid mission went... I don't think astronauts are the important part of the equation so much as the lunar orbit part is.

Even then I'm wondering how easy it is to get this thing back to Earth surface intact. If it was tiny, then sure, stuff it in aerogel, but this thing is going to be somewhere on the order of 800,000 kilograms (napkin estimate)...that's almost half the mass that the Space Shuttle was when full of fuel, and one hell of a lot more than its payload-to-landing! Anything you wrap it in is going to wreck fine features of the surface when you decelerate--for scientific purposes, it's a lot more fragile than astronauts. You need to pickaxe parts off of it gently for transport and study. I'm not sure how good our teleoperated waldos are in practice, so...astronauts.

Re:Astronauts are obsolete technology

[Strider-]

Even then I'm wondering how easy it is to get this thing back to Earth surface intact.

I dunno, if KSP taught me anything, all we need to do is strap 50 MK16 parachutes to it, and everything should be fine. ;)

Re:Exploration?

[Lodragandraoidh]

1st rule of Space Brigade: don't talk about Space Brigade.

Re:pointless

[Ol Olsoc]

yeah, tools like you who are smarter than the rocket scientists. And, your notion of sending a 200 lb astronaut with another 20,000 lbs of support vehicle being "easier" than sending a 2000 lb satellite is just baffling.

Let's chat about orbital mechanics and the space environment.

Oh yeah, 1) we don't have to bring the satellite back

So did we get some sort of Star Trek Transporter technology? Or we're just going to tell the samples to get on over to earth? I suspect that if you did d want the asteroid to be looked at (a big assumption - I suspect you don't) you have a grossly inflated expectations of the capabilities of satellite based chemical analysis. Ever been in a real chem lab?

you're making a stupid, stupid assumption that the "boulder" will actually be monolithic and not shed pieces under the tidal forces. You're likely to be wrong.

Wow. Two stupids. Okay, first thing is that we've got this awesome new technology called bags Usually they have a hole at one end, and they are kind of closed up at the other. So if we wanted to snare and send back a crumbly Carbonaceous asteroid, we'd probably put a bag around it. Some bags are pretty darn big too. Still, we don't have to bring back Vesta, you know.

Second thing, we might pick and choose among the asteroids. The nickle-iron ones are of mining interest, and are darned solid. The carbonaceous ones are of great interest to scientists, and the silicate ones are probably of least interest - but who knows?

In the end, this is an exercise in so many different things, snagging, transporting, probably extraction methods, research and development, its a real winner.

And your non-problem problems just show how some have to grasp at straws to find reasons to oppose it.