The team will give its opinion probably at the end of January
Progress on what has been done recently in defining a future mission to an asteroid. Research and experiments being conducted at several NASA centers outline an initial path for a manned landing mission on an asteroid - a journey that may allow samples to be brought from one of the space rocks as well as sharpen the professionalism of the astronauts and be a testing ground for equipment intended for other destinations in space.
Such a mission will be based on NASA's Constellation Initiative - the overall plan that is ultimately intended to land humans on the Moon, Mars and beyond, as defined by NASA. One of the components of the program is the Orion spacecraft - the vehicle that will replace the shuttle and allow departure from Earth's orbit.
In the meantime, NASA is in the final stages of writing a report required by Congress to develop a Shimpa catalog, which may even make it possible to deal with the dangerous rocks from space. The space agency's report is supposed to be delivered to Congress next week (early January).
If lawmakers give the green light to next-generation Near-Earth Object (NEO) research, the number of objects of this type known to science may increase 40-fold. By the time the asteroid mission is ready, there may be a wide variety of suitable targets.
According to Carlton Allen, from the Office of Astromaterials at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said that research into the applicability of a manned mission to an asteroid has already begun, and the plan is to fly humans to one of the near-Earth objects, and among the other tasks they will be assigned will also be to collect samples and return them to the earth. One of the members of the test team, retired astronaut Edward Lu said that the team wants to use Orion technology even before 2020, as well as Delta or Atlas rockets to launch a spacecraft for a mission that is not in Earth orbit. "There are many relatively low-velocity asteroids whose orbits are relatively close to Earth." told him. According to him the ideal NEO is close but slow, a match made in heaven.
"These will be easy targets" he told him. They won't require strong rocket power to meet them." said. According to him, the team's report will be submitted by the end of January 2007.
