The agency is fully engaged with this mission.
Is it along the lines of 'engaged on all fronts of politics, finance, engineering, logistics and science of the mission'
What else would SLS and Orion do without it?
Um...anything new about ARM or is it starting to turn belly up already?
On Oct. 30 there was an extended telecon to discuss ARM. It was an open telecon and I know two people who listened in (there were also slides) and both said that it was very informative and interesting. Anybody know if there's a link to this anywhere?
I found it:http://www.nasa.gov/feature/asteroid-redirect-mission-community-updateThe recording is here:https://ac.arc.nasa.gov/p2uso7polyj/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal
WOW! Christmas came early this year - real early. Look what the NASA Advisory Council just suggested NASA do.http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2015/04/advisors-to-nasa-dump-the-asteroid-mission-and-go-to-phobos-instead/Upthread I think I pretty much said the exact same thing. (Dances around the Christmas tree)
Sending an Orion, with a much enlarged Service Module(a Bigelow inflatable?) to Phobos would be BOTH a Mars mission and an asteroid mission in ONE. Taxpayers would get more bang for their buck.
After studying the problem, NASA engineers concluded they didn’t have the tools or the budget to mount a human mission to an asteroid. They couldn’t even come close to the 2025 date. So NASA kludged a solution that became known as the asteroid retrieval mission, or ARM.Under this plan the agency would send a robotic spacecraft out into the Solar System, grab an SUV-sized boulder off the surface of an asteroid, and bring it back to the vicinity of the Moon. Astronauts would then visit it in 2025. Technically, this still met Obama’s goal. But it was an unhappy solution for most involved, and it wasn’t clear how this brought the agency much closer to its ultimate destination of Mars.Ars reached out to one space industry veteran who listened to Radzanowski’s presentation for clarification. This politically connected analyst, who did not want to damage his reputation with NASA, offered a blunt explanation for Radzanowski’s asteroid comments: “Oh come on, these poor guys are just trying to get through one more budget release with a shred of dignity intact knowing it’s all in the crapper next year.”That seems an all too realistic possibility. Congress has been lukewarm in its support of the asteroid mission, at best. Many scientists who study asteroids have said it doesn’t contribute much to their field of work. And it doesn’t seem likely a new president will embrace a “near-term” mission that won’t be completed during his or her administration.One former senior NASA official who has retained contacts within the agency’s Washington DC headquarters said NASA is unlikely to go to bat for the asteroid mission with the next president. “Nobody believes in the ARM mission,” this source told Ars. “When the boss says go make this happen, you have to jump. That’s part of the deal. But deep in their hearts, is anybody really sold on ARM? I don’t think so.”
Is the astroid return mission dead ? It makes sense that it will be killed next year. Nobody is really enthusiastic about it.