NASA has revealed more information about its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which is no longer attempting to capture an entire asteroid. The agency has now decided that a non-crewed spacecraft will be travelling to one of the three candidate asteroids in the year 2020. When the craft arrives in 2022, it will then employ robotic arms to pick and protect a small boulder from the asteroid, and spend various years in towing the boulder into a stable orbit in the middle of the Earth and the Moon.The agency also intends to send a team of astronauts to research on the boulder in the year 2025 by utilizing the Orion capsule, which is the same spacecraft that shall eventually carry the first humans to Mars. The team will also be delegated the responsibility to return samples to the Earth. The Asteroids are rocky and are filled with precious metals, which will impart information about the formation of our solar system, along with providing material value.
Bringing the three asteroids in consideration — Itokawa, Bennu, and 2008 EV5 — have been well researched and are even visited by other spacecraft, so the mission seems to be less insecure than sending an investigation to explore a comet, which is almost a half-billion miles away from the Earth.
The original mission plan that has been discarded by NASA, involved a herculean task of “lassoing” an entire asteroid. The jettisoned mission needed a larger spacecraft and many moving parts, especially an inflatable module that was to encompass and seal the asteroid inside before towing it to a stable orbit.
According to NASA, the challenges faced by the agency in the execution of missions like this will help us greatly to develop important skills required in initiating a trip to Mars. Regardless of the inspirational statement, Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) has had its fair share of tumultuous history.
Vox’s Joseph Stromberg, says that the mission was initially dubbed as the Space Launch System (NASA’s next giant rocket to carry humans to space) with the purpose to do something in between its development and upcoming missions to the Moon or Mars.
The ARM has also suffered the wrath of the House Republicans because many would want to see NASA return to the Moon instead. As a repercussion, ARM failed to receive a specific funding. Keeping in mind that NASA won’t be making the absolute asteroid selection until the year 2019, even the present version of ARM is far from being solid. Photo credit: NASA