Skip to footer

How will capturing an asteroid help put humans on Mars? NASA chief explains.

NASA's asteroid mission will test propulsion systems and other technologies that can ultimately establish a human presence on Mars, says NASA chief Charles Bolden.

|
NASA
This concept image shows an astronaut retrieving a sample from the captured asteroid. Image released Aug. 22, 2013.
  • By Miriam Kramer SPACE.com Staff Writer

NASA's wild plan to capture an asteroid and park it near the moon is only one step on the way to Mars, NASA chief Charles Bolden said Wednesday (March 26).

The space agency is planning an ambitious mission to send a robotic spacecraft to an asteroid, bag the space rock and bring it into orbit around the moon. While the asteroid-capture mission may sound like a huge task in its own right, Bolden thinks that it's only one leap toward a larger mission. The space agency should be focused on getting humans to Mars and establishing a presence on the Red Planet for years to come, Bolden said.

"The ultimate thing … is to put boots on the ground on Mars, and that's not just to do a touch and go," Bolden said during a forum about the asteroid initiative Wednesday. "It's to live there one of these days." [NASA's Asteroid Capture Mission in Photos]

Though it might not be the ultimate goal, the asteroid redirect mission is still an important step that can be used to test propulsion systems and other technology that could help humans get to Mars. The asteroid mission may also be a good way to gather more information about the early solar system and develop asteroid mining techniques, advocates of the mission have said.

"We really make a big deal out of this [asteroid] initiative, but you should all understand, this is a tiny, tiny piece of getting humans to Mars," Bolden said. "I don't want anybody to lose focus on that. The ultimate goal of this agency right now when it comes to human spaceflight is to put humans on Mars. That's hard. That is really hard. We need a proving ground to develop some of the technologies and everything else."

That proving ground could be the asteroid capture mission. So far, NASA scientists have identified some promising asteroids that could potentially be captured and dragged into a stable orbit around the moon. NASA would launch a robotic mission to retrieve the chosen space rock and tow it into lunar orbit, where astronauts could visit and sample the asteroid by 2025.

Engineers are looking into two different ideas for how the retrieval mission would work. In one mission, the robotic spacecraft would visit a large asteroid and pluck a boulder off of it, bringing it back to lunar orbit. In the other, NASA would target a small asteroid that could be lassoed and deposited in a stable orbit. Scientists have now identified about six target asteroids for each of the missions.

NASA officials hope to us the Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket — both designed to take humans farther into space than ever before — to launch crews to the asteroid. The new rocket and capsule are slated to fly crews together for the first time in 2021. Orion is scheduled to make a test flight later this year.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Copyright 2014 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to How will capturing an asteroid help put humans on Mars? NASA chief explains.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0327/How-will-capturing-an-asteroid-help-put-humans-on-Mars-NASA-chief-explains
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe