Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Possible Destination? Researchers Find Water Ice and Organics on Asteroid

Asteroid Itokawa. Credit: JAXA

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We usually think of asteroids as dark, dry, lifeless chunks of rock, just like the image of Asteroid Itokawa, above. But some asteroids may be more like “minor planets” after all. Researchers have found evidence on one asteroid – 24 Themis – of water ice and organic materials. This discovery is exciting on two fronts: one, this evidence supports the idea that asteroids could be responsible for bringing water and organic material to Earth, and two, if the proposed path for NASA is to visit an asteroid, having water and organics at the destination makes things a bit more interesting.

24 Themis, a 200-kilometer wide asteroid sits halfway between Mars and Jupiter. Using NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, Josh Emery from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Andrew Rivkin of Johns Hopkins University measured the spectrum of infrared sunlight reflected by the asteroid and found the spectrum consistent with frozen water. They determined that 24 Themis is coated with a thin film of ice. They also detected organic material.

“The organics we detected appear to be complex, long-chained molecules. Raining down on a barren Earth in meteorites, these could have given a big kick-start to the development of life,” Emery said.

Finding ice on the surface of 24 Themis was a surprise because its proximity to the sun causes ice to vaporize. Plus, the surface temperatures are too warm for ice to stick around for a long time.

This image shows the Themis Main Belt which sits between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroid 24 Themis, one of the largest Main Belt asteroids, was examined by University of Tennessee scientist, Josh Emery, who found water ice and organic material on the asteroid's surface. His findings were published in the April 2010 issue of Nature. Credit: Josh Emery/University of Tennessee, Knoxville

“This implies that ice is quite abundant in the interior of 24 Themis and perhaps many other asteroids,” Emery said, and therefore the ice is regularly being replenished.

This might be done by “outgassing” in which ice buried within the asteroid escapes slowly as vapor migrates through cracks to the surface or as vapor escapes quickly and sporadically when 24 Themis is hit by space debris.

The discovery of abundant ice on 24 Themis may mean that water is much more common in the Main Belt of asteroids than previously thought. Since Themis is part of an asteroid “family” that was formed from a large impact and the subsequent fragmentation of a larger body long ago, this scenario means the parent body also had ice and has deep implications for how our solar system formed.

Ice on asteroids may be the answer to the puzzle of where Earth’s water came from, Emery said.

“Asteroids have generally been viewed as being very dry. It now appears that when the asteroids and planets were first forming in the very early Solar System, ice extended far into the Main Belt region,” Emery said. “Extending this refined view to planetary systems around other stars, the building blocks of life — water and organics — may be more common near each star’s habitable zone. The coming years will be truly exciting as astronomers search to discover whether these building blocks of life have worked their magic there as well.”

In choosing a possible destination for future explorations, 24 Themis would perhaps be a good candidate.

The findings are published in the April 29 issue of the journal “Nature.”

Source: EurekAlert

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Newly Discovered Asteroid Will Pass by Earth April 8

Orbit of asteroid 2010 GA6. Image credit: NASA/JPL

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Good to know the Spaceguard teams are keeping an eye out for us. The eagle-eyed observers at the Catalina Sky Survey have spotted an asteroid which will pass relatively close to Earth this Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 23:06 U.T.C. (4:06 p.m. PDT, 7:06 pm EDT). But it should pose no problem, as at the time of closest approach asteroid 2010 GA6 will be about 359,000 kilometers (223,000 miles) away from Earth – about 9/10ths the distance from to the moon. The asteroid is approximately 22 meters (71 feet) wide.

“Fly bys of near-Earth objects within the moon’s orbit occur every few weeks,” said Don Yeomans of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

This one, however, is a bit bigger than other recent asteroid alerts NASA’s Near Earth Observation program has issued. In November 2009, a 7-meter asteroid called 2009 VA came within 14,000 km (8,700 miles) of Earth and in January, 2010 AL30 was about 10-15 meters long and came within only 128,000 km (about 80,000 miles).

NASA’s NEO program, also called Spaceguard, discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

So while you’re waiting for this one to pass by you can read Don Yeoman’s top ten favorite asteroid facts.

The Catalina telescope is in Tucson, Arizona.

For more information about asteroids and near-Earth objects, visit NASA’s Asteroid Watch page.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Asteroid Might be Visible to Naked Eye on Feb. 17

Asteroid Vesta as seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA/ESA/U of Md./STSci/Cornell/SWRI/UCLA

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An asteroid could be visible with binoculars, or even the naked eye on Wednesday, February 17, 2010. No, it’s not coming close to Earth, although this second most massive object in the asteroid belt will be at its closest point to Earth in its orbit, about 211,980,000 kilometers (131,700,000 miles) away. Asteroid Vesta – one of the asteroids that the Dawn spacecraft will visit – will be at opposition on Wednesday, meaning it is opposite the sun as seen from Earth, and is closest to us. Vesta is expected to shine at magnitude 6.1, and that brightness should make it visible for those with clear skies and a telescope, but perhaps even those blessed with excellent vision and little or no light pollution. Vesta will be visible in the eastern sky in the constellation Leo, and will continue to be visible — although less so — in the coming months.

What makes this space rock so prominent these days? Along with its relative proximity at this point, a full half of the asteroid is being bathed by sunlight when seen from Earth, making it appear brighter. Another attribute working in the observer’s favor is that Vesta has a unique surface material that is not as dark as most main belt asteroids – allowing more of the sun’s rays to reflect off its surface.

For more info about observing Vesta, check out this article from Sky & Telescope.

If you get lucky enough to see Vesta, and want to learn more about it, check out this info on the Dawn mission website. Dawn is currently motoring its way through the asteroid belt, will begin its exploration of Vesta in the summer of 2011.

Source: JPL

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Hubble Takes A Look at Possible Asteroid Collision

Hubble Views of Comet-like Asteroid P/2010 A2. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA)

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We reported earlier that on January 6, 2010, ground-based observatories may have spotted evidence of an asteroid collision in the asteroid belt. Now, the Hubble Space Telescope has taken a look at the mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and trailing streamers of dust. With Hubble’s sharp vision, astronomers believe a head-on collision between two asteroids has actually occured. Astronomers have long thought the asteroid belt is being ground down through collisions, but such a smashup has never been seen before.

“This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal comets,” said principal investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. “The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from tiny unseen parent bodies.”

Asteroid collisions would likely have an average impact speed of more than 11,000 miles per hour, or five times faster than a rifle bullet. The comet-like object imaged by Hubble, called P/2010 A2, was first discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research, or LINEAR, program sky survey on Jan. 6. New Hubble images taken on Jan. 25 and 29 show a complex X-pattern of filamentary structures near the nucleus.
Hubble shows the main nucleus of P/2010 A2 lies outside its own halo of dust. This has never been seen before in a comet-like object. The nucleus is estimated to be 460 feet in diameter.

Close-up of Comet-like Asteroid P/2010 A2. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA)

Normal comets fall into the inner regions of the solar system from icy reservoirs in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. As a comet nears the sun and warms up, ice near the surface vaporizes and ejects material from the solid comet nucleus via jets. But P/2010 A2 may have a different origin. It orbits in the warm, inner regions of the asteroid belt where its nearest neighbors are dry rocky bodies lacking volatile materials.

This leaves open the possibility that the complex debris tail is the result of an impact between two bodies, rather than ice simply melting from a parent body.

“If this interpretation is correct, two small and previously unknown asteroids recently collided, creating a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight,” Jewitt said.

The main nucleus of P/2010 A2 would be the surviving remnant of this so-called hypervelocity collision.

“The filamentary appearance of P/2010 A2 is different from anything seen in Hubble images of normal comets, consistent with the action of a different process,” Jewitt said. An impact origin also would be consistent with the absence of gas in spectra recorded using ground-based telescopes.

The asteroid belt contains abundant evidence of ancient collisions that have shattered precursor bodies into fragments. The orbit of P/2010 A2 is consistent with membership in the Flora asteroid family, produced by collisional shattering more than 100 million years ago. One fragment of that ancient smashup may have struck Earth 65 million years ago, triggering a mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. But, until now, no such asteroid-asteroid collision has been caught “in the act.”

At the time of the Hubble observations, the object was approximately 180 million miles from the sun and 90 million miles from Earth. The Hubble images were recorded with the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

Source: HubbleSite

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Asteroid Detection, Deflection Needs More Money, Report Says

Artists impression of an asteroid flying by Earth. Credit: NASA

Are we ready to act if an asteroid or comet were to pose a threat to our planet? No, says a new report from the National Research Council. Plus, we don’t have the resources in place to detect all the possible dangerous objects out there. The report lays out options NASA could follow to detect more near-Earth objects (NEOs) that could potentially cross Earth’s orbit, and says the $4 million the U.S. spends annually to search for NEOs is insufficient to meet a congressionally mandated requirement to detect NEOs that could threaten Earth. “To do what Congress mandated NASA to do is going to take new technology, bigger telescopes with wider fields,” said Don Yeomans, Manager of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program Office, speaking at the American Geophysical Union conference last month.

However, Yeomans said work is being done to improve the quality and quantity of the search for potentially dangerous asteroids and comets. “We have a long term goal to have three more 1.8 meter telescopes,” he said, “and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope with an 8.4 meter aperture in 2016. Once these new facilities are in place, the data input will be like drinking from a fire hose, and the rate of warnings will go up by a factor of 40.”

But getting all these facilities, and more, online and running will take continued and additional funding.

Congress mandated in 2005 that NASA discover 90 percent of NEOs whose diameter is 140 meters or greater by 2020, and asked the National Research Council in 2008 to form a committee to determine the optimum approach to doing so. In an interim report released last year, the committee concluded that it was impossible for NASA to meet that goal, since Congress has not appropriated new funds for the survey nor has the administration asked for them.

But this issue isn’t and shouldn’t be strictly left to NASA, said former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, also speaking at the AGU conference. “There’s the geopolitical misconception that NASA is taking care of it,” he said. “They aren’t and this is an international issue.”

Schweickart said making decisions on how to mitigate the threat once a space rock already on the way is too late, and that all the decisions of what will be done, and how, need to be made now. “The real issue here is getting international cooperation, so we can — in a coordinated way — decide what to do and act before it is too late,” he said. “If we procrastinate and argue about this, we’ll argue our way past the point of where it too late and we’ll take the hit.”

But this report deals with NASA, and committee from the NRC lays out two approaches that would allow NASA to complete its goal soon after the 2020 deadline; the approach chosen would depend on the priority policymakers attach to spotting NEOs. If finishing NASA’s survey as close as possible to the original 2020 deadline is considered most important, a mission using a space-based telescope conducted in concert with observations from a suitable ground-based telescope is the best approach, the report says. If conserving costs is deemed most important, the use of a ground-based telescope only is preferable.

The report also recommends that NASA monitor for smaller objects, and recommends that immediate action be taken to ensure the continued operation of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and support a program at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex. Although these facilities cannot discover NEOs, they play an important role in accurately determining the orbits and characterizing the properties of NEOs.

Schweikart quoted Don Yeomans as saying the three most important things about asteroid mitigation is to find them early, find them early and find them early.

“We have the technology today to move an asteroid,” Schweikart said. “We just need time. It doesn’t take a huge spacecraft to do the job of altering an asteroid’s course. It just takes time. And the earlier we could send a spacecraft to either move or hit an asteroid, the less it will cost. We could spend a few hundred million dollars to avoid a $4 billion impact.”

But the report put out by the NRC stresses the methods for asteroid/comet defense are new and still immature. The committee agreed that with sufficient warning, a suite of four types of mitigation is adequate to meet the threat from all NEOs, except the most energetic ones.

• Civil defense (evacuation, sheltering in place, providing emergency infrastructure) is a cost-effective mitigation measure for saving lives from the smallest NEO impact events and is a necessary part of mitigation for larger events.
• “Slow push” or “slow pull” methods use a spacecraft to exert force on the target object to gradually change its orbit to avoid collision with the Earth. This technique is practical only for small NEOs (tens of meters to roughly 100 meters in diameter) or possibly for medium-sized objects (hundreds of meters), but would likely require decades of warning. Of the slow push/pull techniques, the gravity tractor appears to be by far the closest to technological readiness.
• Kinetic methods, which fly a spacecraft into the NEO to change its orbit, could defend against moderately sized objects (many hundreds of meters to 1 kilometer in diameter), but also may require decades of warning time.
• Nuclear explosions are the only current, practical means for dealing with large NEOs (diameters greater than 1 kilometer) or as a backup for smaller ones if other methods were to fail.

Although all of these methods are conceptually valid, none is now ready to implement on short notice, the report says. Civil defense and kinetic impactors are probably the closest to readiness, but even these require additional study prior to reliance on them.

Source: National Research Council
Read the entire report

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Asteroids Zipping Too Close to Earth Can Experience Seismic Activity

Artist concept of an NEA.

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An asteroid’s orbit can be altered if it travels in the vicinity of Earth. But astronomers are finding the effects Earth has on space rocks go far beyond just orbital alterations. Richard Binzel of MIT says that Earth has considerable influence on asteroids — and from a distance much larger than previously thought. He has determined that if an near-Earth asteroid (NEA) travels within a certain range of Earth, roughly one-quarter of the distance between Earth and the moon, it can experience a “seismic shake” strong enough to bring bright, new regolith to its surface. This new finding has helped answer the question of how some asteroids appear to have fresh surfaces, as well as shedding new light on where most meteorites come from.

These rarely seen “fresh asteroids” have long interested astronomers because their spectral fingerprints, or how they reflect different wavelengths of light, match 80 percent of all meteorites that fall to Earth, according to a paper by Binzel appearing in the Jan. 21 issue of Nature. The paper suggests that Earth’s gravitational pull and tidal forces create these seismic tremors.

By hypothesizing about the cause of the fresh surfaces of some NEAs, Binzel and his colleagues have tried to solve a decades-long conundrum about why these fresh asteroids are not seen in the main asteroid belt, which is between Mars and Jupiter. They believe this is because the fresh surfaces are the result of a close encounter with Earth, which obviously wouldn’t be the case with an object in the main asteroid belt. Only those few objects that have ventured recently inside the moon’s orbital distance and have experienced a “fresh shake” match freshly fallen meteorites measured in the laboratory, Binzel said.

Binzel’s team telescopically collected information on NEAs, including a huge amount of spectral fingerprint data. Analyzing this data, the group examined where a sample of 95 NEAs had been during the past 500,000 years, tracing their orbits to see how close they’d come to Earth. They discovered that 75 NEAs in the sample had passed well inside the moon’s distance within the past 500,000 years, including all 20 fresh asteroids in the sample.

Binzel next determined that an asteroid traveling within a distance equal to 16 times the Earth’s radius (about one-quarter of the distance to the moon) appears to experience vibrations strong enough to create fresh surface material. He reached that figure based on his finding that about one-quarter of NEAs are fresh, as well as two known facts — that the space weathering process that ages regolith can happen in less than one million years, and that about one-quarter of NEAs come within 16 Earth radii in one million years.

Before now, people thought an asteroid had to come within one to two Earth radii to undergo significant physical change.

Many details about the shaking process remain unknown, including what exactly it is about Earth that shakes the asteroids, and why this happens from a distance as far away as 16 Earth radii. What is certain is that the conditions depend on complex factors such as the velocity and duration of the encounter, the asteroid’s shape and the nature of the preexisting regolith. “The exact trigger distance depends on all those seismology factors that are the totally new and interesting area for cutting edge research,” Binzel said.

Binzel also proposed a new field of study: asteroid seismology.

Further research might include computer simulations, ground observations and sending probes to look at the surfaces of asteroids. Binzel’s next steps will be to try to discover counterexamples to his findings or additional examples to support it. He may also investigate whether other planets like Venus or Mars affect asteroids that venture close to them.

Source: EurekAlert

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Asteroid Collision May Have Created Comet-like Object

P/2010 A imaged by Dr. Robert McMillan at Kitt Peak, Arizona. Credit: LINEAR

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A strange comet-like object discovered on January 6, 2010 may actually be the result of an asteroid collision. Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) sky survey in New Mexico spotted an object in the asteroid belt, called P/2010 A that looked “fuzzy,” with a tail like a comet rather than a speck of light like a normal asteroid. But comets don’t normally reside in the asteroid belt, and the object’s orbit is all wrong for a comet. While the asteroid belt is made up of debris from the “leftovers” of our solar system, and like the remains of early crashes between giant rocks, astronomers haven’t witnessed a collision before.

Other comet/asteroid crossbreeds have been seen previously, such as the Comet P/1996 N2 discovered in 1996, but astronomers are keeping a close eye on this latest oddball, as they believe the best explanation is that collision took place between two asteroids deep in space, about 250 million miles away from Earth. If they are right, it will be the first confirmed high-speed crash ever witnessed between massive space rocks.

Sky and Telescope reports that the comet specialists are hoping to observe the strange goings-on with both the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. Neither has been given the green light yet, but if/when that happens the observations would be made within the next few days.

Sources: Skymania, Sky & Telescope, Discovery Space

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Images and Videos of 2010 AL30

Series of 30 15" exposures tracking on 2010 AL30 between 07:18:16 and 07:27:29 GMT - Credit: Patrick Wiggins

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Amateur astronomers heeded the call of making observations of the small asteroid 2010 AL30, which whizzed by Earth today. Here are some of the great images and videos captured by the amateur astronomy community, which will help the professionals determine the exact orbit, and also perhaps what exactly this unusual asteroid is. The object, which has been estimated to be between 10-15 meters (30 -50 feet) across, is likely a natural object, but it hasn’t officially been ruled out that it might be man-made, i.e., a spent rocket booster, from perhaps the Venus Express mission. The folks who are apt to make the determination are those who work with the 70-meter radio dish at Goldstone. I corresponded with Lance Benner from the Goldstone facility, and he said, “We’re still working with the data so it’s still too early to say.”

We’ll keep you posted, but in the meantime, enjoy some of the images and videos of 2010 AL30’s flyby. Above, NASA Solar System Ambassador Patrick Wiggins in Utah took a series of exposures and combined them into a “movie.” He used a C-14 @ f/5.5 telescope and SBIG ST-10 binned 3×3 using a clear filter. The Field of View is about 18 x 26 arc minutes.

2010 AL30, on January 13, 2010. Credit: Ernesto Guido & Giovanni Sostero, Remanzacco Observatory.

This image was taken by 2010 AL30, on January 13, 2010 by Ernesto Guido & Giovanni Sostero, at the Remanzacco Observatory in Italy. Check out their website for more images.

The prospect of 2010 AL30 hitting Earth never even entered into the equation of this unusual asteroid. The problem, (if there is one) is that it was only detected two days ago. The other issue is its origin. The Italian astronomers who took the above image noted that the object has an orbital period of almost exactly one year and might be a man-made object. However, Alan Harris, senior researcher at the Space Science Institute countered by saying the object has a perfectly ordinary Earth-crossing orbit, and that its orbit doesn’t resemble any useful spacecraft trajectory. Additionally, NASA put out a press release yesterday saying the object was “a natural” asteroid.

“This object’s orbit reaches the orbit of Venus at its closest point to the sun and nearly out to the orbit of Mars at its furthest point, crossing the Earth’s orbit at a very steep angle,” the press release said. “This makes it very unlikely that 2010 AL30 is a rocket stage. Furthermore, trajectory extrapolations show that this object cannot be associated with any recent launch and it has not made any close approaches to the Earth since well before the Space Age began.”

continued below….

This is another video from Patrick Wiggins, this time with a smaller exposure time. “The target is pretty faint (not surprising for 1″ exposures) so you have to look close to see it as it moves from left to right,” he said. (Thanks to the SciBuff website for the video.)

But then, ESA mission analyst Michael Khan looked at data from the Venus Express mission, and he wrote in his blog that perhaps 2010 AL30 might be the Fregat upper stage of the rocket that sent Venus Express to Venus. Only more detailed analysis of data from the object will provide the answer.

This image was taken by Tavi Greiner, using the SLOOH robotic observatory on the Canary Islands, at 03:02 GMT. Check out SLOOH to find out how you can take your own images.

The initial word from Goldstone is that the object produced very strong radar echoes, and also that it had a very fast 9-minute rotation.

The trajectory of 2010 AL30. Credit: NASA's NEO program

The trajectory of 2010 AL30.

2010 AL30 imaged on January 12 from the distance of 0.003 7 AU at the Nazaret Observatory at the Canary Islands – Credit: Gustavo, Muler, Schteinman – Observatorio Nazaret, J47. Click on the image or here to see a “movie” of the object.

Check out more images on Spaceweather.com, including this image from Alberto Quijan Vodniza and Mario Rojas Pereira from the University of Narino- Columbia.

There’s also this very cool animation of 2010 AL30’s approach, and what Earth would look like to anyone “riding” on the asteroid.

Also, check out the Transient Sky blog, where Carl Hergenrother lays out the details what might have happened if 2010 AL30 had been headed for impact with Earth.

And one more thing, via the Bad Astronomer, is this great graphic showing how far away this object passed by Earth.

Sources: SciBuff, Emily Lakdawalla’s Planetary Blog, Spaceweather.com, Transient Sky

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Russia May Head Mission to Deflect Asteroid Apophis

Orbital path of Apophis. Credit: NASA NEO Program

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Russia is considering sending a spacecraft to deflect a large asteroid and prevent a possible collision with Earth, according to a radio interview by the head of the country’s space agency. Anatoly Perminov said the space agency will hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to asteroid Apophis, and said NASA, ESA, the Chinese space agency and others would be invited to join the project. Apophis is a 270-meter (885-foot) asteroid that was spotted in 2004. It is projected to come within 29,450 kilometers (18,300 miles) of Earth in 2029, and currently has an estimated 1-in-250,000 chance of hitting Earth in 2036.

A panel at the recent American Geophysical Union conference stressed that asteroid deflection is a international issue.

“There is a geopolitical misconception that NASA is taking care of it,” said former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who is part of the B612 Foundation, which hopes to prove the technology to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid by 2015. “They aren’t and this is an international issue. The decisions have to be world decisions.”

Perminov seemed unaware that NASA’s Near Earth Object program recently downgraded the possibility of a 2036 asteroid impact and also for a subsequent pass in 2068.

Perminov said that he heard from a scientist that Apophis asteroid is getting closer and may hit the planet. “I don’t remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032,” Perminov said. “People’s lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people.”

Perminov wouldn’t disclose any details of the project, saying they still need to be worked out. But he said the mission wouldn’t require any nuclear explosions.

“Calculations show that it’s possible to create a special purpose spacecraft within the time we have, which would help avoid the collision without destroying it (the asteroid) and without detonating any nuclear charges,” Perminov said. “The threat of collision can be averted.”

Boris Shustov, the director of the Institute of Astronomy under the Russian Academy of Sciences, hailed Perminov’s statement as a signal that officials had come to recognize the danger posed by asteroids like 2036 Apophis.

“Apophis is just a symbolic example, there are many other dangerous objects we know little about,” he said, according to RIA Novosti news agency.

Sources: Associated Press/Yahoo News, AGU panel discussion

Here’s some more information on the 2036 meteor.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Where To Next for NASA’s Solar System Exploration?

From top to bottom, pictured are the moon, Venus, and an asteroid.From top to bottom, pictured (not to scale) are the moon, Venus, and an asteroid. These three celestial bodies from our solar system are possible candidates for NASA's next space venture.

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Where is NASA going next to probe our solar system? The space agency announced today they have selected three proposals as candidates for the agency’s next space venture to another celestial body in our solar system. The proposed missions would probe the atmosphere composition and crust of Venus; return a piece of a near-Earth asteroid for analysis; or drop a robotic lander into a basin at the moon’s south pole to return lunar rocks back to Earth for study. All three sound exciting!

Here are the finalists:

Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer, or SAGE, mission to Venus would release a probe to descend through the planet’s atmosphere. During descent, instruments would conduct extensive measurements of the atmosphere’s composition and obtain meteorological data. The probe then would land on the surface of Venus, where its abrading tool would expose both a weathered and a pristine surface area to measure its composition and mineralogy. Scientists hope to understand the origin of Venus and why it is so different from Earth. Larry Esposito of the University of Colorado in Boulder, is the principal investigator.

Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer spacecraft, called Osiris-Rex, would rendezvous and orbit a primitive asteroid. After extensive measurements, instruments would collect more than two ounces of material from the asteriod’s surface for return to Earth. The returned samples would help scientists better undertand and answer long-held questions about the formation of our solar system and the origin of complex molecules necessary for life. Michael Drake, of the University of Arizona in Tucson, is the principal investigator.

MoonRise: Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin Sample Return Mission would place a lander in a broad basin near the moon’s south pole and return approximately two pounds of lunar materials for study. This region of the lunar surface is believed to harbor rocks excavated from the moon’s mantle. The samples would provide new insight into the early history of the Earth-moon system. Bradley Jolliff, of Washington University in St. Louis, is the principal investigator.

The final project will be selected in mid-2011, and for now, the three finalists will receive approximately $3.3 million in 2010 to conduct a 12-month mission concept study that focuses on implementation feasibility, cost, management and technical plans. Studies also will include plans for educational outreach and small business opportunities.

The selected mission must be ready for launch no later than Dec. 30, 2018. Mission cost, excluding the launch vehicle, is limited to $650 million.

“These are projects that inspire and excite young scientists, engineers and the public,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “These three proposals provide the best science value among eight submitted to NASA this year.”

The final selection will become the third mission in the program. New Horizons, launched in 2006, will fly by the Pluto-Charon system in 2015 then target another Kuiper Belt object for study. The second mission, called Juno, is designed to orbit Jupiter from pole to pole for the first time, conducting an in-depth study of the giant planet’s atmosphere and interior. It is slated for launch in August 2011.

Visit the New Frontiers program site for more information.