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NASA

NASA's ARM Will Take a Boulder From an Asteroid and Put It In Lunar Orbit 97

Posted by samzenpus from the throwing-rocks dept.
coondoggie writes NASA officials today said they have picked the specific asteroid mission and offered new details for that mission which could launch in the 2020 timeframe. Specifically, NASA's associate administrator Robert Lightfoot said the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) will rendezvous with the target asteroid, land a robotic spacecraft on the surface, grab a 4 meter or so sized boulder and begin a six-year journey to redirect the boulder into orbit around the moon for exploration by astronauts.
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NASA's ARM Will Take a Boulder From an Asteroid and Put It In Lunar Orbit More

NASA's ARM Will Take a Boulder From an Asteroid and Put It In Lunar Orbit

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  • So the Moon will have its own moon now?

    • Re: Just what the Moon always wanted (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Twist:
      The moon already has a moon. It's called "Earth."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        Indeed, they rotate around each other, contrarily to popular belief where the Moon rotates around the Earth.

      • There is no strict definition, but the most commonly used one is: A moon is never the larger mass and the larger mass has to be a planet.

        • Re: Just what the Moon always wanted (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2015 @08:03PM (#49340713) Homepage Journal

          In order to account for binary systems, I generally look at the central axis of rotation - if it's inside one of the bodies, that body is the 'primary' - IE a planet, sun, whatever. If it's outside, then it's a double system.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ls671 ( 1122017 )

            In order to account for binary systems, I like to generalize and say it's all the same although the formula to compute the actual center of mass when inside the larger body differs than when it is outside. This is because when inside the larger body, some part of the larger body modify the gravitational attraction from the smaller body.

            But in the end, the important point to be aware of is the center of mass.

            http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org]

            As a side note. although there is few references to such cases, it

          • That would make the Sun and Jupiter a binary system.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ls671 ( 1122017 )

              Nope it wouldn't.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ls671 ( 1122017 )

              Ok I will give you an hint:

              It would make the solar system a {0} body system with a very hard center of mass to compute.
              The {0} parameter would depend on which planets we exclude from our Earthly definition I guess, think about Pluto ;-)

              In the end yes, the whole thing rotates around the center of mass which we haven't clearly identified yet...

              • Going by the AC's picture, I guess I'd have to amend my statement to 'center of mass spends at least some time in one of the orbital bodies', if Jupiter and Saturn are enough to yank it outside on occasion.

          • In order to account for binary systems, I generally look at the central axis of rotation - if it's inside one of the bodies, that body is the 'primary' - IE a planet, sun, whatever. If it's outside, then it's a double system.

            So if the moon were located about 20% further from Earth, then you would consider the Earth-Moon system a binary system?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ls671 ( 1122017 )

              Thanks, that was what I was trying to say; same difference.

            • We're darn close to it anyways. We have a freaky huge moon for the size of our planet, far out of proportion from the rest of the planets.

              I've actually theorized that it might be factor in life forming.

              • Actually, it is pretty much accepted from what I understand that the Moon had several influences on the rise and development of life on this planet, from (among others) stabilizing our spin, to moderating the seasons, deflection of large asteroids, and even to the development of optic cones in addition to rods (or rods in addition to cones, I forget which), etc.

                I think that it was Asimov that pointed out that our Moon follows a fully concave path around the Sun, i.e. never travels backwards, and in his opin

      • Re: Just what the Moon always wanted (Score:5, Interesting)

        by SQL Error ( 16383 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2015 @08:06PM (#49340731)

        They rotate around a common center of gravity. But that center of gravity is inside the Earth. Or to put it another way, no.

  • All fun and games (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Throwing rocks is all fun and games until someone breaks a window on the ISS.

  • American aerospace contractors are displeased to note that NASA plans to have the Asteroid Redirect Vehicle fabbed on a 20nm process by TSMC, rather than more traditional launch partners...

    • American aerospace contractors are displeased to note that NASA plans to have the Asteroid Redirect Vehicle fabbed on a 20nm process by TSMC, rather than more traditional launch partners...

      NASA is displeased to find that TSMC's 20nm process is actually a planar 28nm process with the name changed. Elon Musk is upset that NASA didn't select his far superior 14nm trigate process that is superior in every metric.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sowelu ( 713889 )

      Somehow I misread that as PTMC, which struck me as being the very last people we'd want fabbing space vehicles.

      • I read it as "NASA's ARM will take a Boulder from Android and Put It In Linux"

        perhaps I should drink more coffee and wear my glasses.

  • you know, maybe the one the asteroid really, really likes.
    • I think there's already a 2030 mission in the works to send the boulder back with flowers, chocolates, and an apology letter inscribed on a golden disc that reveals a YouTube compilation of Carl Sagan quotes if placed in a laserdisc player. (The instructions on the sleeve for constructing such a device simply say "This product has been discontinued" in a mixture of pulsar coordinates and atomic oscillations.)

  • Why not just examine the asteroid where it is? Possibly bringing samples back to earth, if really necessary.

    How does having an astronaut in a clumsy suite help?

    • Re:Astronauts are obsolete technology (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sowelu ( 713889 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2015 @08:06PM (#49340737)

      Rendezvousing with asteroids is actually really tricky, especially if you want to get the same one twice. Hell with astronauts--putting this boulder somewhere that we can reach it over and over again, even just with probes, is a real big win. Especially considering how the last asteroid mission went... I don't think astronauts are the important part of the equation so much as the lunar orbit part is.

      Even then I'm wondering how easy it is to get this thing back to Earth surface intact. If it was tiny, then sure, stuff it in aerogel, but this thing is going to be somewhere on the order of 800,000 kilograms (napkin estimate)...that's almost half the mass that the Space Shuttle was when full of fuel, and one hell of a lot more than its payload-to-landing! Anything you wrap it in is going to wreck fine features of the surface when you decelerate--for scientific purposes, it's a lot more fragile than astronauts. You need to pickaxe parts off of it gently for transport and study. I'm not sure how good our teleoperated waldos are in practice, so...astronauts.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Strider- ( 39683 )

        Even then I'm wondering how easy it is to get this thing back to Earth surface intact.

        I dunno, if KSP taught me anything, all we need to do is strap 50 MK16 parachutes to it, and everything should be fine. ;)

  • In other news, Ni!SA (formerly NASA) has cancelled their plans for a mission to cut down the tallest tree in the forest with a herring, in favor of a mission to acquire a shrubbery and return it for study.

  • ... it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that orbitals are dependent on other orbitals.

    I know damned well, given the difficulty of solving the three body problem [wikipedia.org], that NASA doesn't know what effect relocating an asteroid will have on other objects.

  • Do you explore a 4 meter boulder? Or do you just examine it?

    • Gotta be a typo. Don't they mean 400 meters or 4KMs? That size would be exploration worthy as a test of various aspects of the coming asteroid belt mining operations needed when we use up all the exotic metals here at home.

    • Do you explore a 4 meter boulder? Or do you just examine it?

      If you sent astro-mites, I'm sure that would count as exploration.

  • What astronauts exactly? And why put something in the path of possible future moon missions (made by perhaps smarter countries than the USA)

    • What astronauts exactly? And why put something in the path of possible future moon missions (made by perhaps smarter countries than the USA)

      Seriously? You figure that asteroid is going to make a Dyson sphere around the moon or something?

      If we are to find out what is in Asteroids, just imagine how much moore convenient it will be than having to go far out to analyze them.

      Anything else you hate about existence?

      • They're talking about a Distant Retrograde Orbit (which are stable over a century) in the earth-moon plane at 47,000 miles above moon.

        • They're talking about a Distant Retrograde Orbit (which are stable over a century) in the earth-moon plane at 47,000 miles above moon.

          Oy - I was hoping it was clear I was being really sarcastic, but I did not know specifics about the orbit they were thinking of, so thanks for that bit of info.

  • Honestly, its a wicked idea however the use of Humans to execute the material retrieval for analysis does make much sense unless they are doing active and repetitive analysis at the captured space boulder.

    Its seems more intuitive to just fly some robots up to do the capture and send back the samples back to Earth as needed?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by f3rret ( 1776822 )

      Honestly, its a wicked idea however the use of Humans to execute the material retrieval for analysis does make much sense unless they are doing active and repetitive analysis at the captured space boulder.

      Its seems more intuitive to just fly some robots up to do the capture and send back the samples back to Earth as needed?

      I have a feeling the human participation in this mission is just as much for the sake of science/engineering. It's been a long time since we had humans any further out than the ISS.

  • I wish this were a joke (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ...but it's not.

    We dreamed of going to the moon, then Mars. Then NASA decided they'd harness an asteroid to "develop technologies". Now we're going to move a rock piece from an asteroid to a moon orbit, and then study it! How far we have fallen, what a joke.

  • Mini-moon. *pinky*

  • ...because you can lose your ARM that way.

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