NASA has announced that, in the 2020s, the agency’s deep space capabilities will be tested by giving the moon its own small moon. The plan is to break off a small piece of an asteroid and slowly tow it into orbit around the moon so that it can be visited and studied by astronauts.
This will give researchers a chance to learn more about asteroids and the early universe, to test technologies designed to redirect near-Earth objects (NEOs) should it become necessary and to test equipment designed for destinations such as Mars, all in one go.
“The Asteroid Redirect Mission will provide an initial demonstration of several spaceflight capabilities we will need to send astronauts deeper into space, and eventually, to Mars. The option to retrieve a boulder from an asteroid will have a direct impact on planning for future human missions to deep space and begin a new era of spaceflight,” said NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot in a statement.
NASA has already begun looking at possible candidate asteroids, including Itokawa, Bennu and 2008 EV5. According to the agency, they expect to add one or two candidates per year between now and the launch date. The candidate will be chosen in 2019 or 2020 prior to the launch of the ARM spacecraft.
The uncrewed spacecraft will use robotic arms to remove a boulder from the asteroids surface and then will rely on gravity to drag the boulder into a lunar orbit.
The ARM spacecraft will provide NASA with a live test of Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP), which uses solar power for propulsion. Although not as fast as chemical propulsion, SEP is far less expensive and could be used to move cargo into place to supply deep space missions.
In 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact mission demonstrated the capability to change a NEOs trajectory by ramming it with a spacecraft. The ARM spacecraft will attempt to change an objects trajectory using a technique NASA calls a “gravity tractor”.
Because any object in space has an influential gravitational effect on any other object, researchers believe that they can use the gravitational tug of the ARM spacecraft to move objects without touching them.
This could be used in the future to move NEOs that are on a trajectory that would carry them into Earth’s path.
If all goes will it will take six years to tow the boulder into the moon’s orbit. In the mid-2020’s NASA will send a crewed mission on the Orion Spacecraft to visit the asteroid chunk.
This will allow NASA to test equipment, including new spacesuits designed for the radiation of deep space, for a future Mars mission as well as collect samples of the comet for further study on Earth.
“Asteroids are a hot topic, not just because they could pose a threat to Earth, but also for their scientific value and NASA’s planned mission to one as a stepping stone to Mars.” said Jim Green, director of NASA Planetary Science.
NEOs are also an important topic to those interested in asteroid mining. According to NASA the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter contains mineral resources worth $100 billion apiece for each of the 7 billion people on Earth.
In addition to laying out its plans for deep space exploration, the agency announced that they have a much clearer picture of NEOs than they did just a few years ago.
According to NASA, they have increased their detection of asteroids by 65 percent over the last three years and can now account for “96 percent of near-Earth asteroids larger than 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) in size.” In 2014 alone, 1,472 new objects were detected.
Members of the public can now get directly involved in the hunt for NEOs with NASA’s Asteroid Grand Challenge activities.
