If you cancel plans to go back to the moon and onto Mars, but Congress recognizes that not having a human exploration program in the U. At first there was a move to go to a Lagrangian Point, which is just what it sounds like: a point in space—one where the gravity of the Earth, moon and Sun neutralize one another, allowing objects essentially to hang in place.
An interesting astrophysical exercise and potentially useful as a part of a broader exploratory program, but as a destination? So the asteroid mission landed on the table.
We would send American astronauts to an asteroid to study it and by doing that, learn how to deflect potential Earth-killing asteroids and end forever the Hollywood fascination with that doomsday scenario.
Only there were no asteroids close enough for a crew to reach safely. The obvious eye-rolling questions aside, the significant question was—then what? So Mars went back on the planning table, at least rhetorically. Private companies like the asteroid plan, whether NASA does it or not. It is an absolute fact that bureaucratically unchallenged private companies can be more nimble and efficient in procurement strategies and possibly design approach. But they will find that designing for environments much harsher than the pocket in which the company president keeps his cell phone is not so easy.
And oh by the way, building all of the capability to get to an asteroid, land on it, deliver the required hardware for mining, get the product home, or send, build, maintain and operate a fuel processing facility on an asteroid is hard. Some experts say that mining could be a reality within the next decade or so. In this vision, asteroids may serve as way stations of sorts, supplying fuel and other resources for missions deeper into space.
Asteroids also fill an existential void. For much of the time since the United States first entered space, we have been at a loss for what, exactly, to do up there. The moon has lost its lustre and is costly to reach, and a manned mission to Mars—the only remotely habitable destination in our solar system—is decades away, at best.
Shortly after President Obama took office, in , he sought to eliminate projects that relied on expensive, heavy-lift rockets; this included the Constellation program, which had, as one of its goals, a human landing on the moon by the twenty-twenties. The political blowback was even fiercer than expected. Senators in Florida and Texas clamored to save jobs at plants that risked being shuttered. Stalwarts at NASA and the State Department smarted, as did the international community, which had long focussed on returning to the moon.
Recognizing his vulnerability, Obama asked the Office of Science and Technology Policy, his advisers on science and space matters, to identify another place for the agency to go. The answer, in short order: asteroids.
The capturing phase is due to launch around For now, asteroid mining is strictly the province of private companies such as Planetary Resources, whose investors include Ross Perot, Jr.
Below the lower limit, the pairs should be easily recognizable if they exist and are discovered by surveys. We searched for candidate very young asteroid pairs in the current catalog of asteroid orbits. After a preliminary analysis, we selected the most promising case of the small asteroids SS and AT We collected photometric observations to determine their rotation periods and absolute magnitudes.
The rotation period of SS is 5. Analysis of the data for AT49 indicates as the most probable period 2. The composite light curves of the two asteroids have very low amplitudes, 0. These two asteroids experienced a very close encounter, probably a formation event, some 7. This means that — probably is the youngest known asteroid pair in our dataset with a reliable determined age. Data correspond to usage on the plateform after The current usage metrics is available hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
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