NASA is Training Up an Astronaut Crew for a Potential Manned Asteroid Mission

[American Patriot]

NASA is Training Up an Astronaut Crew for a Potential Manned Asteroid Mission

By Clay Dillow Posted 05.15.2012 at 12:40 pm 6 Comments

Asteroid Eros This spud-shaped rock is asteroid 433 Eros. Gregory W. Nemitz claimed to own it and aims to develop it. In 2003, he sued NASA in search of parking fees after the NEAR spacecraft alighted on it. NEAR Project/NLR/JHUAPL/NASA

We haven’t heard much about if from NASA yet, but the Telegraph is reporting that the space agency will soon begin training up an international crew of astronauts for a potential manned mission to an asteroid slated for later in the next decade. Starting next month, six astronauts are headed to the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operation (NEEMO), the underwater habitat off the Florida coast that will serve as a simulator for the long duration mission to an asteroid, the UK outlet reports.
The multinational team of asteroid astronauts, which includes Britain’s first official astronaut with the European Space Agency, will spend its time living in tight quarters 65 feet beneath the ocean surface for 12 days, during which time crew members will undertake simulated spacewalks on the seafloor and learn to pilot vehicles in much the same way they would if they were working in proximity to an asteroid.
Related Articles

	Technological Challenges Aside, Is Asteroid Mining Legal?
	Why Mining an Asteroid for Water and Precious Metals Isn't as Crazy as it Sounds
	Chinese Scientists Plan to Pull an Asteroid into Orbit Around Earth

Tags

Technology, Clay Dillow, asteroid mission, asteroids, esa, manned asteroid mission, nasa, Space
A manned asteroid mission would of course be unprecedented (if the private sector doesn’t get there first), operating far beyond mankind’s furthest point of exploration on the moon’s surface. A trip to an asteroid could take astronauts up to three million miles away. It would likely take a year to make the round trip, and astronauts might remain there for up to a month. Details of NASA’s vision for such a mission are to be presented to the international community at the Japan Geoscience Union meeting later this month. The agency will also present details underlying a robotic asteroid rendezvous mission that it hopes will return samples from an asteroid by 2016 as a precursor to any manned mission.

[American Patriot]

Astronauts to land on 'planet killer' asteroid Published: Thursday, May 17, 2012, 14:54 IST Place: London | Agency: ANI

NASA is training a team of astronauts to land on asteroids, which are three million miles from the Earth. The mission, planned for the next decade, would land on an asteroid travelling at more than 50,000 miles an hour. The astronauts will drive vehicles on the surface - and pick up skills necessary to destroy ‘planet killer’ asteroids that may approach our planet in future. The journey to the asteroid and back could take up to a year, according to the Daily Mail. Major Tim Peake, a former British Army helicopter pilot, and the first official British astronaut with the European Space Agency revealed details of the mission. Peake and five other astronauts will prepare for the low-gravity environment of the asteroid by spending 12 days in an underwater base off the coast of Florida, 65 feet beneath the Atlantic. They will live in a capsule 43 feet long by 20 feet wide to simulate the cramped conditions on an asteroid. “With the technology we have available and are developing today, an asteroid mission of up to a year is definitely achievable,” Major Peake said in an interview in the Telegraph. “These objects are also coming extremely close to Earth all the time, but we rarely hear about it. In the last year we had an asteroid come within Earth’s geostationary orbit, which is closer than some satellites. “With enough warning we would probably send a robotic mission to deflect an asteroid, but if something is spotted late and is big enough we might come into Armageddon type scenarios where we may have to look at manned missions to deflect it,” he stated. Peak added, “I would love to go on an asteroid mission. There is a possibility that if things continue at a good pace an asteroid mission could happen within the 2020s and that is within the operational time frame of myself and the other ESA astronauts.”