NASA studies sending crew to asteroid

By Leonard David

Senior space writer

updated 12:29 p.m. ET Nov. 17, 2006

NASA is appraising a human mission to a near-Earth asteroid — gauging the scientific merit of the endeavor while testing out spacecraft gear, as well as mastering techniques that could prove useful if a space rock ever took aim at our planet.

Space agency teams are looking into the use of Constellation hardware for the mission to a near-Earth object — an effort under way at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Another study is delving into use of Constellation components to support an automated Mars sample return mission. That study is led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The Constellation Program encompasses NASA’s initial efforts to extend the human presence throughout the solar system.

Major pieces of the Constellation Program — such as the Orion crew vehicle — are meant to support transport of humans and cargo to the moon and to the international space station, while future efforts would sustain missions to Mars and beyond.

Astronauts, engineers and scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston have been looking into the capabilities of the Orion vehicle for the mission to a near-Earth asteroid.

Significant assets
“A human mission to a near-Earth asteroid would be scientifically worthwhile,” said Chris McKay, deputy scientist in the Constellation science office at Johnson Space Center. “It could be part of an overall program of understanding these objects. Also, it would be useful, instrumentally, in terms of understanding the threat they pose to the Earth.”

Stationed at NASA’s Ames Research Center, located in California’s Silicon Valley, McKay told Space.com that work is under way to evaluate the science enabled by sending crews to asteroids, and to judge how best to assure safe and efficient exploration.

Asteroids are relics from early solar system formation, McKay pointed out. “Then there’s the whole, what I call the ‘Bruce Willis factor’ … the star in the movie ‘Armageddon’ … and the ability to send significant assets to an asteroid.

“There’s a lot of public resonance with this notion that NASA ought to be doing something about killer asteroids … to be able to send serious equipment to an asteroid,” McKay observed. “The public wants us to have mastered the problem of dealing with asteroids. So being able to have astronauts go out there and sort of poke one with a stick would be scientifically valuable as well as demonstrate human capabilities.”

McKay emphasized that it’s premature to send off a piloted mission to an asteroid to do countermeasure activities. “There could be testing of various approaches. But we don’t know enough about asteroids right now to know the best strategy for mitigation,” he said.

Forward-looking reasons
“It’s a terrific mission if we can do it … and if it programmatically makes sense,” said former Apollo astronaut Russell Schweickart, chairman of the B612 Foundation, a group with the goal of significantly altering the orbit of an asteroid, in a controlled manner, by 2015.

Schweickart said that there are a number of “forward-looking reasons” to put asteroids on NASA’s lofty agenda for traveling to the moon, Mars and beyond.

First, he noted the value of asteroids for on-the-spot resources. In addition, validating command-and-control skills in piloting up to an asteroid would be beneficial, he said.

Furthermore, a human venture to a space rock may well accelerate precursor robotic surveys of asteroids, Schweickart observed. “Early unmanned visits to asteroids ... it’s the same pattern as we did with the moon and we’re doing right now with Mars. It’s all pretty logical,” he told Space.com.

Public awareness regarding asteroids, via a human exploration initiative, would be helpful, Schweickart said. It’s an opportunity for the public to be educated in reality, not in terms of Hollywood’s version of asteroid-busting as seen in “Armageddon.”

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