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#360
by
jongoff
on 25 Mar, 2015 17:55
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Alan Boyle:
How long would the human crew spend at the asteroid? What impact does that have on the schedule on other SLS/Orion launches?
Lightfoot:
24-25 day mission once the astronauts are there. They've been going over mission kits and mission planning. The asteroid capture vehicle would have a docking target. Option B allows them to examine the asteroid remotely on the flight back. Two person crew. SLS/Orion will probably go out to DRO before the spacecraft gets back in case it's not there yet. Then they'll visit with SLS/Orion. Doesn't effect the cadence of EM-1/EM-2/EM-3. To do an operational risk reduction.
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#361
by
jongoff
on 25 Mar, 2015 17:57
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Robert Pearlman:
This isn't primarily a science mission, so how much will science drive the selection of the boulder to be brought back?
Lightfoot:
The investigation team is putting together a list of selection criteria now that they know what they're doing. It lets them make some judgements, bring in the science and planetary defense communities as they make these choices. But the capabilities we're developing allow us to assess the sites and to look at them. A couple of years from when they have the boulder to scan the thing and plan for what they'll have the crew do when it goes out there.
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#362
by
jongoff
on 25 Mar, 2015 17:59
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Marcus Woo of Wired Magazine:
Follow-up question--why is it that Option B will provide more opportunity to analyze the asteroid, and if science isn't the priority, are there certain things that are priorities? SEP? Boulder grabbing?
Lightfoot:
Priority from our perspective is capability demonstration of capabilities they'll need for taking humans further into space and eventually to Mars. There is a science benefit, so they'll pull scientists in to help more. Larger asteroids have boulders, and the sensor suite will allow them to pick from multiple targets, and then they have 3-5 tries, and on the way back they have a sensor suite to start seeing what they have brought back. Better value.
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#363
by
jongoff
on 25 Mar, 2015 18:01
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Mike Wall of Space.com:
About the planetary defense. What do you plan to accomplish with the 400 days before you head back with the plucked off boulder? What do you hope to achieve?
LF:
The plan is that once they have the boulder, they'll go into a halo orbit around the larger orbit. Now with the added mass of the boulder, they'll go around the asteroid and demonstrate gravity tractor operations. It takes a while because the spacecraft is small, but they think they can measure the deflection with ground assets and demonstrate that they can really nudge the asteroid. It takes a while, since it's a large mass being moved by a small mass. That's why they're talking 215-400 days. Once they've measured the nudge, they can decide to keep going or head back.
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#364
by
jongoff
on 25 Mar, 2015 18:03
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Call will be available for replay in 1hr
Last question from Irene Klotz of Reuters:
What sort of commercial participation do you anticipate for companies interested in the asteroid and those interested in space tugs, etc?
LF:
Several places here. When we put out RFIs out for Option B they had a lot of interest from traditional and non-traditional folks not only domestically but internationally. During Phase A, we'll peel back those opportunities, and it will factor into our acquisition strategy. A lot of interest on the SEP bus from commercial industry for GEO comms and space tugs. Option B offered more of an opportunity to engage more commercial players. More details in July at the Acquisition Strategy Meeting.
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#365
by
jongoff
on 25 Mar, 2015 18:04
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Call is over.
Can I give a w00t! for them selecting Option B?
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#366
by
GraniteHound92
on 25 Mar, 2015 18:19
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Here's a link to 2008 EV5 in the JPL Small-Body Database.
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2008%20EV5;orb=1On the call they discussed extensibility, but what aspects of Option B are really extensible with a manned mission to another planet? Grappling a boulder off of an asteroid seems highly specialized.
Perhaps a manned mission to Phobos?
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#367
by
jongoff
on 25 Mar, 2015 18:45
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Here's a link to 2008 EV5 in the JPL Small-Body Database. http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2008%20EV5;orb=1
On the call they discussed extensibility, but what aspects of Option B are really extensible with a manned mission to another planet? Grappling a boulder off of an asteroid seems highly specialized.
Perhaps a manned mission to Phobos?
Mission to Phobos or Deimos would be a big one. Plus, the exact same hardware could potentially be used to bring a boulder back from Phobos or Deimos first to test out ISRU. I'd much rather see the first Phobos/Deimos manned mission setting up an ISRU plant to provide fuel to make follow-on Mars missions cheaper and easier.
~Jon
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#368
by
catdlr
on 25 Mar, 2015 19:04
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Asteroid Redirect Mission: Crew Segment
Published on Mar 25, 2015
NASA announced the next step in the plan to retrieve an asteroid boulder from a near-Earth asteroid and redirect it into a stable orbit around the moon to carry out human exploration missions, all in support of advancing the nation's journey to Mars. For NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), a robotic spacecraft will capture a boulder from the surface of an asteroid for exploration by astronauts in the mid-2020s to test a number of new capabilities needed for future human expeditions to deep space, including to Mars. This animation illustrates the crewed part of ARM, showing how astronauts will travel to the asteroid using NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft, investigate the boulder and return a sample of the asteroid back to Earth.
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#369
by
arachnitect
on 25 Mar, 2015 19:08
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Call is over.
Can I give a w00t! for them selecting Option B?
w00t! indeed. Thanks for covering.
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#370
by
Bubbinski
on 25 Mar, 2015 19:28
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Thanks for the coverage!
I wasn't inspired when I first heard about the concept but it is slowly growing on me. I like the idea of a demonstration to move the asteroid's orbit as well as the propulsion demo (SEP). Wondering whether SLS will be the launcher for the Dec 2020 robotic portion as well as the 2025 crewed Orion portion. Also could this be a precursor to a crewed Mars sample return (robotic craft gets sample from Mars, Orion rendezvous with it)?
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#371
by
jongoff
on 25 Mar, 2015 20:30
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Call is over.
Can I give a w00t! for them selecting Option B?
w00t! indeed. Thanks for covering.
No worries. I was going to listen anyway, so I figured I could take notes. Mr Lightfoot talks really, really fast though, so I missed lots of pieces. Fortunately most of the space reporters worth reading were on the call as well, so there should be some good articles with details I missed coming out soon.
~Jon
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#372
by
jongoff
on 25 Mar, 2015 20:31
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Thanks for the coverage!
I wasn't inspired when I first heard about the concept but it is slowly growing on me. I like the idea of a demonstration to move the asteroid's orbit as well as the propulsion demo (SEP). Wondering whether SLS will be the launcher for the Dec 2020 robotic portion as well as the 2025 crewed Orion portion. Also could this be a precursor to a crewed Mars sample return (robotic craft gets sample from Mars, Orion rendezvous with it)?
Not sure if SLS will be the launcher or not. We did all of our analysis based on Falcon 9 and Delta IV-Heavy. SLS would be an expensive way to get the job done.
As for doing MSR this way...sure you could, but there are probably cheaper ways.
~Jon
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#373
by
redliox
on 25 Mar, 2015 21:22
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Well they finally picked an option; between the two I had a feeling the boulder was within our means. Not left impressed but at least I'm glad decisions are being made. Now to hear where they're going to send ARM to pickup the boulder.
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#374
by
Burninate
on 25 Mar, 2015 22:32
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Providing the counterpoint:
Does it bother anyone else that we're reaching for a boulder smaller than the IMLEO of the mission to visit the boulder?
There was more to do in the whole 10m asteroid case: There's new techniques and efforts to scale up in trajectory-agnostic optical detection, and there's a better radar characterization workflow to be perfected, and there's a much larger SEP system to build. The 4m boulder case, on the other hand, needs some claw actuators. Maybe this was cheaper for a training mission, but given that we need to do the other stuff eventually anyway?
Most of all, I don't see that we have made an effort to amortize these efforts over numerous samples. We're going to fund a team to develop the technology to grab a boulder off an asteroid, then grab one boulder off of one asteroid, then spend five years waiting for it to get here, visit it, and forget about it. With cost-effective SEP it makes no sense whatsoever to stagger missions until the previous mission is completed, and if something fails in the unprecedented process of extracting the boulder, we're left with... what?
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#375
by
Borklund
on 25 Mar, 2015 22:37
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So now it's officially happening, and that's great, but it's still five years until the robotic ARM capture spacecraft launches and a decade until humans go very slightly further out than Apollo did and do very little science for very little return. This is thoroughly underwhelming.
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#376
by
Darkseraph
on 25 Mar, 2015 22:51
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I genuinely hope this survives into the next political cycle as even though it seems oblique to Mars or other missions....it will test important capabilities to perform many kinds of missions in the future. I think that is important, that we don't get stuck in oneitis about pet destinations.
What I am most excited about is use of relatively high power SEP systems. These electric propulsion systems really came into their own in 2015 with the Dawn mission and SpaceX launching two all electric Boeing sats.
Even if SLS get's replaced or cancelled after ARM, having systems like this that can efficiently move mass will be more important outcome of the entire program. There are many applications for these to multiple destinations including Moon and Mars (Cyclers with heavy shielding for crew transport...moving huge amounts of cargo to Mars or the Moon. Asteroid mining)
I think the best thing about it apart from the SEP systems is that we will have another destination in Earth Orbit that isn't empty space and will be around for decades, accessible to muliple space programs. You can integrate International and Commercial efforts into this, without say, moon landers blowing a smaller nation/companies budget. Tests for asteroids mining concepts and use of the materials will come out of this. You might even invite China to the party! Landing men directly on Moon might blow their budget, but I am sure they actually could send a Modified Shenzhou to visit this Asteroid for some international diplomatic gesture reasons.
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#377
by
QuantumG
on 25 Mar, 2015 23:04
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Does it bother anyone else that we're reaching for a boulder smaller than the IMLEO of the mission to visit the boulder?
Where'd ya get that? It certainly sounds like it could be close.. I figure about 90 tons for anything resembling a 4m diameter "boulder". Even if they're going to launch their retrieval mission with SLS that's at most 70 tons.. but as I understood it they were aiming for a smaller launch vehicle.
Even if that is the case, you're not getting a gearing factor of 1:1 to the Moon with
anything, so it sounds like a huge win.
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#378
by
Peter NASA
on 25 Mar, 2015 23:06
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Option B makes it easier for Congress to cancel this mission. Wasn't particulary inspiring as it was, 2025 for a small rock is even less so.
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#379
by
Chris Bergin
on 25 Mar, 2015 23:47
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Call is over.
Can I give a w00t! for them selecting Option B?
Congrats on this and thanks for taking the notes!
Obviously deep in our coverage area, so there will be an article on this from us. However, we're mega busy with six launches in quick succession and to be fair I don't really like writing up presser materials, so would have normally gone after a bit more. Will be doing that - not least on what SLS is supposed to be doing pre-2025 - and build something.
