Capturing a near-Earth asteroid and dragging it into orbit around the
moon could help humanity put boots on Mars someday, proponents of the
idea say.
NASA is considering a $2.6 billion asteroid-retrieval mission that could deliver a space rock to high lunar orbit by 2025 or so, New Scientist reported last week. The plan could help jump-start manned exploration of deep space, carving out a path to the Red Planet and perhaps even more far-flung destinations, its developers maintain.
"Experience gained via human expeditions to the small returned NEA
would transfer directly to follow-on international expeditions beyond
the Earth-moon system: to other near-Earth asteroids, [the Mars moons] Phobos and Deimos, Mars and potentially someday to the main asteroid belt,"
the mission concept team, which is based at the Keck Institute for
Space Studies in California, wrote in a feasibility study of the plan
last year.
Space agency officials confirm that NASA is indeed looking at the Keck
proposal as a way to help extend humanity's footprint out into the solar
system. But the assessment is still in its early stages, with nothing
decided yet.
"There are many options — and many routes — being discussed on our way
to the Red Planet," Bob Jacobs, deputy associate administrator for the
Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., told
SPACE.com via email. "NASA and the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are giving the study further review to determine its feasibility." [NASA's Spacecraft for Asteroid Missions Revealed (Photos)]
Enabling manned exploration of deep space
In the Keck plan, an unmanned probe would snag a 25-foot-wide (7
meters) near-Earth asteroid, then haul it back to lunar orbit for future
study and exploration.
Its developers see the mission as a way for humanity to get a toehold
beyond low-Earth orbit, allowing our species to hone techniques and
acquire skills that manned missions to more distant destinations will
require.
For example, the robotic mission would help develop the precision
flying techniques demanded by a manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid.
Further, study of the captured space rock
could teach researchers how to efficiently extract water from asteroids
— a resource that could be an off-Earth source of radiation shielding
and rocket fuel for journeying spacecraft.
"Extraction of propellants, bulk shielding and life support fluids from
this first captured asteroid could jump-start an entire space-based
industry," the Keck team writes. "Our space capabilities would finally
have caught up with the speculative attractions of using space resources
in situ."
Up-close examination of a captured asteroid would also yield insights
into the economic value of space rock resources and shed light on the
best ways to deflect potentially dangerous asteroids away from Earth.
Overall, the potential benefits of the mission are huge, the Keck team says.
"Placing a NEA in lunar orbit would provide a new capability for human
exploration not seen since Apollo," the report reads. "Such an
achievement has the potential to inspire a nation. It would be mankind’s
first attempt at modifying the heavens to enable the permanent
settlement of humans in space."
NASA's new spaceships
Human exploration of deep space beyond the moon is a NASA priority. In
2010, President Barack Obama directed the agency to get astronauts to a
near-Earth asteroid by 2025, then on to the vicinity of the Red Planet by the mid-2030s.
To make all of this happen, NASA is developing a crew capsule called Orion and a huge rocket known as the Space Launch System. The Orion-SLS combo is slated to begin flying crews by 2021. The first unmanned Orion test flight is expected in 2017.
The space agency
is also developing a new Space Exploration Vehicle for astronauts bound
to explore a near-Earth asteroid. A prototype of the new vehicle, which
could feature a rocket sled and "pogo stick" device for docking with an
asteroid, coul dbe tested at the International Space Station in 2017,
project officials have said.
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