Obama shoots for an asteroid

[ginscpy]

I am - WTF??????????????????????

That is what hesaid the United States next manned landing should be

 

[waltky]

Granny says fling it back at dem space aliens dat's been chuckin' dem asteroids at us...

NASA to capture asteroid for astronauts to explore
Sun, Apr 07, 2013 - IN THE BAG: The US space agency says that exploring the asteroid would speed up its mission to put a man on Mars and help develop a way to stop future collisions

NASA is planning for a robotic spaceship to capture a small asteroid and park it near the moon for astronauts to explore, Senator Bill Nelson said on Friday. The plan would speed up by four years the existing mission to land astronauts on an asteroid by bringing the space rock closer to Earth, Nelson said. The robotic ship would capture the 500 tonne, 7.6m asteroid in 2019. Using an Orion space capsule — currently being developed — a crew of about four astronauts would nuzzle up next to the rock in 2021 for a spacewalking exploration, a government document obtained by media showed. Nelson said this would help NASA develop the capability to nudge away a dangerous asteroid if one headed to Earth in the future. It also would be training for a future mission to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, he said.

Nelson, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Science and Space, said US President Barack Obama is putting US$100 million in planning money for the accelerated asteroid mission in next year’s budget, which comes out next week. The money would be used to find the right small asteroid. “It really is a clever concept,” Nelson said in a news conference in Florida, the state where NASA launches take place. “Go find your ideal candidate for an asteroid. Go get it robotically and bring it back.” While there are thousands of asteroids that size out there, finding the right one that comes by Earth at just the right time to be captured will not be easy, said Donald Yeomans, who heads NASA’s Near Earth Object program, which monitors close-by asteroids.

He said that once a suitable rock is found, it would be captured with the space equivalent of “a baggie with a drawstring. You bag it. You attach the solar propulsion module to de-spin it and bring it back to where you want it.” Yeomans said that an asteroid of that size is no threat to Earth because it would burn up should it inadvertently enter Earth’s atmosphere. The mission as Nelson described is perfectly safe, he said. The US government document said the mission, with no price tag at the moment, would be inspirational because it “will send humans farther than they have ever been before.”

NASA to capture asteroid for astronauts to explore - Taipei Times

 

[ScienceRocks]

Nice,

I hope this asteroid is at least 100-200 feet wide and this mission moves it into a stable orbit around the earth. Early in earth history the moon was much closer so I believe we could put it maybe midway? (as in 100-150 thousand miles) This way we could have a outpost on this rock.

 

[waltky]

WISE telescope to be used to find asteroids...

Mothballed NASA telescope may get new life as asteroid hunter
1 Aug.`13 - NASA is considering re-activating a mothballed space telescope to help find asteroids that could be on a collision course with Earth, according to a senior U.S. space agency official.

Launched in December 2009, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, telescope spent about a year taking pictures for an all-sky map. With its infrared detectors, WISE was able to peer through thick layers of dust and see even relatively dim objects such as cool brown dwarf stars in great detail. NASA then put WISE to work on another mission looking for asteroids and comets in the solar system. Of particular interest were objects in orbits that pass relatively close to Earth. WISE found about 150 near-Earth asteroids, including 20 that were potentially hazardous, before funding for the project ran out. The telescope was put into hibernation in February 2011.

NASA is now reviewing options for enhancing its asteroid-hunting efforts including bringing WISE out of hibernation, Lindley Johnson, who oversees the agency's Near-Earth Objects observations program, said this week. This follows February's explosion of a small asteroid in the skies above Russia and the near-Earth passage of a larger one the same day. More than 1,500 people were hurt by flying glass and debris after that small asteroid exploded above Chelyabinsk, Russia. The larger asteroid then zipped past Earth closer than the networks of communication satellites that ring the planet. Together, those events served as a celestial alarm clock, prompting congressional hearings and fresh calls for NASA and other agencies to step up asteroid detection initiatives.

NASA says it already has found about 95 percent of the asteroids that are .62 miles or larger in diameter. "If an object of that size were to impact the Earth, it would have global consequences," Lindley said during a NASA advisory committee meeting in Washington. "One as much as 100 meters (328 feet) in size would have regional effects and could cause a great many casualties." The Obama administration has requested funding from Congress to double NASA's $20 million Near-Earth Objects detection programs for the 2014 fiscal year beginning October 1. Costs for WISE's potential re-activation and operation were not released, but Johnson said it may be possible within the program's current $20 million annual budget and would easily fit within the proposed $40 million spending plan. NASA's human exploration program also has been developing an initiative to send a robotic spacecraft to a small nearby asteroid and redirect it into a high orbit around the moon, officials said.

Astronauts would then visit the asteroid as part of an initial foray to send humans beyond the International Space Station, which flies about 250 miles above Earth. Another $85 million in Obama's $17.7 billion 2014 spending plan for NASA would start technology developments and planning for the robotic portion of the asteroid encounter. NASA is about halfway through a 15-year effort to find 90 percent of all near-Earth objects that are as small as about 459 feet in diameter. Scientists say one of the quickest ways to speed up the effort is to re-activate WISE. "We think it can be operated for three years and get much more data," Johnson said. Time is of the essence as WISE is expected to slip from its optimal viewing orbit around Earth by early 2017.

Mothballed NASA telescope may get new life as asteroid hunter

See also:

Ice core data supports ancient space impact idea
1 August 2013 > New data from Greenland ice cores suggest North America may have suffered a large cosmic impact about 12,900 years ago.

A layer of platinum is seen in ice of the same age as a known abrupt climate transition, US scientists report. The climate flip has previously been linked to the demise of the North American "Clovis" people. The data seem to back the idea that an impact tipped the climate into a colder phase, a point of current debate. Rapid climate change occurred 12,900 years ago, and it is proposed that this is associated with the extinction of large mammals such as the mammoth, widespread wildfires, and rapid changes in atmospheric and ocean circulation. All of these have previously been linked to a cosmic impact, but the theory has been hotly disputed due to lack of clear evidence.

Greenland ice cores provide a window into the past

New platinum measurements were made on ice cores that allow conditions 13,000 years ago to be determined at a time resolution of better than five years, report Michail Petaev and colleagues from Harvard University. Their results are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A 100-fold spike in platinum concentration occurs in ice that is around 12,890 years old, at just the same moment that rapid cooling of the climate is indicated from oxygen isotope measurements, at the start of a climatic period called the "Younger Dryas". The Younger Dryas started and finished abruptly, and is one of a number of shorter periods of climate change that appear to have occurred since the last glacial maximum of 20,000 years ago. Each end of the Younger Dryas period may have involved very rapid changes in temperature as the climate system reached a tipping point, with suggestions that dramatic changes in temperature occurred over as short as timescale as a decade or so.

Asteroid apocalypse?

The observations lend credence to earlier, disputed, reports that finds of microscopic grains of diamond and a mineral called lonsdaleite in lake sediments dated to the same time were identified with a possible meteorite impact. Those measurements resemble the most recent observations of remnants of the Tunguska meteorite impact in Siberia, reported last month. Sphere-shaped particles have also been identified at many localities in sediments dating to this event, most recently reported this month by a team led from Canada in the Journal of Geology. Such particles are characteristic of the rapidly heated and cooled splatter of material thrown up when meteorites hit Earth. While the platinum data and the spherical particles add to evidence for an impact event, doubters have pointed out that, as yet, no impact site has been identified. It has been suggested that debris thrown into the atmosphere in an impact tipped the Earth into global cooling at a rate as rapid as the global changes in climate in the reverse direction seen in the last century.

Such rapid climate change makes it difficult for ecologies and societies to adjust: It is the fluctuation that has been invoked as the cause of the extinction of massive mammals (megafauna) like the mammoth, and native cultures such as the Clovis people in North America. The possible role of cosmic impacts in causing huge changes to life on Earth is receiving increased attention. The mass extinction 66 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs is generally believed to be linked to a space strike in southern Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Recently, a group of scientists led by Eric Tohver at the University of Western Australia reported that the biggest extinction of all, which occurred 252.3 million years ago at the end of the Permian period, could be explained by an asteroid impact in Brazil. Nasa is now focusing resources towards detection of future Earth-threatening asteroids, receiving over 400 responses to their recent request for ideas to feed into their Asteroid Grand Challenge, in which they hope to redirect a space rock and send humans to study it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23536567

 

[Old Rocks]

Nice,

I hope this asteroid is at least 100-200 feet wide and this mission moves it into a stable orbit around the earth. Early in earth history the moon was much closer so I believe we could put it maybe midway? (as in 100-150 thousand miles) This way we could have a outpost on this rock.

Personally, I am thinking more in terms of what elemental resources the asteroids might contain. Far easier and no pollution problems, to mine many elemental resources out there than here on earth.