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Exploration

The NASA Asteroid Grand Challenge

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
June 18, 2013
Filed under

NASA Announces Asteroid Grand Challenge, NASA
NASA announced Tuesday a Grand Challenge focused on finding all asteroid threats to human populations and knowing what to do about them. The challenge is a large-scale effort that will use multi-disciplinary collaborations and a variety of partnerships with other government agencies, international partners, industry, academia, and citizen scientists. It complements NASA’s recently announced mission to redirect an asteroid and send humans to study it.
NASA also released a request for information (RFI) that invites industry and potential partners to offer ideas on accomplishing NASA’s goal to locate, redirect, and explore an asteroid, as well as find and plan for asteroid threats. The RFI is open for 30 days, and responses will be used to help develop public engagement opportunities and a September industry workshop.
Statement by Ed Lu – CEO, B612 Foundation

SpaceRef co-founder, entrepreneur, writer, podcaster, nature lover and deep thinker.

4 responses to “The NASA Asteroid Grand Challenge”

  1. Steve Whitfield says:
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    The http://www.youtube.com/nasatv link in theSpaceRef article should be http://www.youtube.com/user….

  2. Steve Whitfield says:
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    I wonder if Planetary Resources will respond the RFI and whether NASA would be interested in partnering with them. There would be synergy in having them work together, but then again it might be hedging our bets as a species to have more than one effort going on. I suspect that some (senior managers) at NASA would see PR as the competition, but at the same time would be envious of PR’s funding. I hope they will, at the very least, exchange critical data on existing threats.

    The Inspiration Mars program is not slated to carry any detection instruments, or have the ability to record instrument results, based presumably on cost and time factors. However, if NASA were to supply the necessary equipment and cover the extra costs, Maybe MI could be employed as a mobile asteroid detector. It would operate in clear space free of Earth’s noise sources and it would give the passengers something important to do during the long trip.

    As I understand it (this needs to be checked), most of our current “threat” observations are made from within the plane of the ecliptic, which means there’s a whole lot of “sky” not being searched. I wonder if any of the contributors/partners in this program will address this shortcoming. The cause of the next extinction event could already be in sight, but we’re not looking in the right direction.

  3. SouthwestExGOP says:
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    Another Grand Challenge, like the Orbital Debris Grand Challenge, that apparently will have no funding (since the Congress seems very skeptical of this idea).