Next station asteroid

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alokmohan

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Experts have been wary of asteroids since they came to the conclusion that one of them ended the Age of the Dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Scientists such as Stephen Hawking warn that their relatively close proximity presents grave dangers to humankind, a point of view supported in a number of recent books, such as William Burrows' The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Save Earth and British astronomer royal Martin Rees' Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning. <br /><br /><br />But others consider asteroids the next landscape for scientific discovery. "We're looking at the possibilities," says Kelly Humphries, a spokesman for NASA's Johnson Space Center. With NASA planning a moon-exploring spacecraft, Humphries says, "Anything robust enough to go to the moon is going to be robust enough for lots of missions."<br /><br /><br />In December, NASA astronaut Edward Lu told Space.com that plans under study include landing on an asteroid and retrieving rock samples for return to Earth before 2020. <br /><br /><br />And at NASA's Ames Research Center, lab chief Simon "Pete" Worden, a longtime advocate of such exploration, has set aside $10 million for designing small spacecraft that could visit asteroids, according to the Jan. 19 Science magazine. <br /><br /><br />The space agency does have a few asteroid missions already planned. In its just-released 2008 budget, NASA said it is studying a mission, dubbed the Origins Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security (OSIRIS) probe, to return rock samples from an asteroid.<br /><br /><br />In June, NASA will launch the Dawn mission to orbit the two largest asteroids, Ceres and Vesta, in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.<br /><br /><br />And outside NASA, others also see asteroids' scientific potential.<br /><br /><br />"They are pristine in a way, vagabonds <br />
 
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3488

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Thanks alokmohan.<br /><br />This is a great thread.<br /><br />It is true, that much developed hardware is more than capable of carrying out a crewed asteroid mission.<br /><br />It looks as if the idea of a sample return mission to the Mars moon Phobos is being resurected. The Russian Phobos / Grunt may happen & now a feasibility study here in the UK is to be carried out along similar lines, perhaps also with Deimos. Both may be captured type C (Carbonaceous) asteroids, by Mars.<br /><br />We know that the navigation issues are not a big problem, given the remarkable encounters with the asteroids 951 Gaspra & 243 Ida by the Galileo spacecraft, along with 253 Mathilde & 433 Eros with the NEAR / Shoemaker spacecraft, not to mention 25143 Itokawa, with the JAXA Hayabusa.<br /><br />I do think that the opportunity to encounter asteroid 5535 Annefrank could have been better utilized by the comet Wild 2 Stardust spacecraft.<br /><br />These objects are all very different to one another in many ways, different histories & present different opportunities. We have the up coming encounters with asteroids 2867 Steins & 21 Lutetia, with the ESA Rossetta spacecraft. <br /><br />Also the upcoming DAWN spacecraft to dwarf planet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cer</safety_wrapper <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>
 
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