Category: Asteroids!

NASA has decided to go with the Option B mission for the Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM). http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/march/nasa-announces-next-steps-on-journey-to-mars-progress-on-asteroid-initiative/ Option B, for those who may not have been following the story, involves a robotic retrieval spacecraft that

Demonstrating large-scale solar electric propulsion (SEP) systems. This is one of NASA’s main interests in the ARM mission — in the land of expensive launch vehicles, very high specific impulse propulsion, like you can get

Providing a good way of testing out a man-tended space habitat. One of the ideas NASA is looking at incorporating into ARM is attaching a prototype deep-space habitat. This would allow visits of up to

Providing an ideal testbed for asteroid in situ resource utilization (ISRU) development     Many people see asteroids as the premier source of vast quantities of off-world resources. But while there is no shortage of

Jonathan Goff’s first point in reasons why NASA ARM missions may be a good thing: Adding a new, even more accessible “moon” to the Earth-moon system. A lot of people fixate on the fact that

One of the subjects near and dear to my heart is the avoidance of Earthly extinction via asteroid or cometary impact. We should be working diligently to get off this planet and spreading ourselves around,