NASA wants to harvest a rock on an asteroid early next … – publico

                 

                         
                     

                 

 
                         

The US space agency NASA decided to launch an automatic ship in 2020 to go harvest a rock chunk of an asteroid. The rock is then dragged and placed in lunar orbit, where astronauts can explore in a first step to future manned trips to Mars, announced Wednesday that agency in a statement.

                     

                         NASA gives up so towing a whole asteroid, as it had initially envisaged in its Mission Redirection Asteroids (ARM, its acronym in English), launched three years ago. “The concept of the mission was approved and gave the green light to start phase A,” said Robert Lightfoot, head of NASA, during a telephone press conference.

“ARM should allow a first demonstration several space flight systems necessary to send astronauts to remote destinations in space, especially to Mars, “he said.

The launch of the automatic nature ARM, which will be equipped with a motor propulsion” solar-electric “that is currently being developed, is expected in principle to December 2020 and should reach the asteroid in 2022

NASA has selected three potential asteroids -. Itokawa, Bennu and 2008 EV5 – but continues to looking for other candidates, having increased by 65% ​​since the creation of ARM, your asteroid detection capability whose orbit passes near the Earth’s orbit. The agency has until 2019, a year before the release of the ship ARM, to choose the asteroid and considers that it will also identify one or two candidates there.

Once near the chosen asteroid, the ship ARM will deploy its robotic arm to pick up a rock, whose size may reach four meters in diameter, on the asteroid’s surface. Then the ship will tow the rock to the place after a journey of about six years, a stable lunar orbit. The cost of the mission (without taking into account the launch) is expected to stand at around 1250 million (EUR 1150 million).

In 2025, NASA will send it to the rock aboard an Orion capsule, which is already in development, two astronauts who will exploit it, collecting samples of material that should bring back to Earth. This phase of the mission provides NASA should take 24 to 25 days.

NASA intends to test asteroid deviation techniques that might someday be needed to save the Earth from a potentially catastrophic collision.