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Exploration

NASA's Boulder Retrieval Mission

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
June 29, 2015
Filed under , , , ,
NASA's Boulder Retrieval Mission

Keith’s note: NASA quietly admitted today at the Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG) Meeting that one of the formally baseline, prime science requirements of the Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) is to retrive a boulder from the surface of an asteroid and bring it back to lunar orbit where a human crew will do science with it. Despite the mission’s name no “asteroid” will actually be “retrieved”. As such NASA really should refine the mission to be the “Boulder Retrieval Mission”. To be honest the whole notion of grabbing anything in space was never a driver for this mission – despite the name.
NASA seems to be having some issues with the whole boulder thing too. Today a speaker outlining hardware design work for ARM at JPL noted that there was a lot of hard thinking and work put into how to build a “synthetic boulder” to be used to test things. Its not a real boulder, its a mockup of a boulder. Its really odd that this would be so hard – especially in southern California where JPLers could easily visit Disney Land which has been making synthetic boulders since the 1950s. A little more freeway driving and they could also visit Hollywood which also has some fair expertise in the creation of synthetic boulders such as the one used in “Star Trek” in 1967.
Another topic of discussion was whether the SBAG get togethers should be a “conference” or a “meeting”. This of course sent SMD’s Jim Green into a long discussion of how hard it is for NASA to do conferences these days since it is hard for NASA to do conferences. It also led to a discussion amongst the participants as to what a “conference” is and what a “meeting” is. Gee, after half a century NASA still has not figured out what a “conference” or a “meeting” is and used meeting/conference time to discuss the topic. I am not certain anything was resolved on this topic.
Back to ARM. At its last meeting the NASA Advisory Council came within a millimeters of recommending that NASA abandon the whole ARM concept and use the solar electric asteroid grabbing vehicle to go to Phobos (and back) instead. This way it would actually serve as a real step on NASA’s #JourneyToMars – by actually going to Mars – instead of a dead end sideshow. It is all but certain that the NAC will take this action at their meeting at JPL on 30-31 July. Of course, Congress is already formally against ARM and with the exception of a few companies who want to mine asteroids, no one really supports it at the present time. And NASA can’t even admit that the $1.25 billion cost (without launcher) would balloon to $3 billion or so when it uses the two SLS flights it wants to use. And oh yes: the OSIRIS-REx mission will already do nearly all of the sciencey stuff ARM is doing (as an afterthought) – at a fraction of the cost of ARM.
So much for the first big step on the road to Mars. It just keeps shrinking.
NASA Advisory Council Wants to Cancel Asteroid Redirect Mission and Send it to Phobos Instead
Asteroid Retrieval Is Not The Prime Intent of NASA’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission
NASA: Two SLS Launches Likely Needed For $3 billion+ ARM, earlier post
Asteroid Redirect Mission Critique
Congress, NAC, SBAG, Question Asteroid Mission, earlier post
Report of the Small Bodies Assessment Group Asteroid Redirect Mission Special Action Team, 30 July 2014 (Draft), earlier post
SBAG Asteroid Redirect Mission Special Action Team, July 2014 presentation, earlier post
Asteroid Experts Are Not Very Fond of NASA’s Asteroid Mission, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

43 responses to “NASA's Boulder Retrieval Mission”

  1. ThomasLMatula says:
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    I think you found the perfect symbol for the mission patch for it 🙂

  2. pipersupercub says:
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    Maybe I’m wrong, but doesn’t the OSIRIS-REx mission basically do all of this for us already? I’ve been wondering this ever since ARM was announced. Somebody help me out here.

    • Jonathan A. Goff says:
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      Well yes, if by “do all of this for us already” you assume a 100g sample is of the same utility as a ~40,000kg sample, and you assume that every NEO is the same so additional data points aren’t useful. And you ignore the value of demonstrating an enhanced gravity tractor for planetary protection, and the value of demonstrating a high-power SEP system for several years.

      OSIRIS-REx is a cool mission, but I’ve never got the “what’s ARM doing that OSIRIS-REx isn’t doing” line of argument. It’s about as ill-informed as Obama’s “been there, done that” comment about the Moon.

      ~Jon

      • Daniel Woodard says:
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        ARM is also a single data point. It just happens to be a rather expensive one. Almost all the cost is in the manned portion of the mission.

        NASA has always had great difficulty attracting support for repeating missions, but if our goal is to obtain science on a wide range of asteroids then a group of similar spacecraft targeting different asteroids would be more productive and less expensive. Multiple samples of more than adequate size could be returned directly to earth, as with Hayabusa, or to the ISS.

        • Jonathan A. Goff says:
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          Daniel,
          I think a lot depends on why you care about going to asteroids. If you care primarily or only about science, then I definitely agree that some sort of either multi-sample mission or large number of smaller missions will get you more data points. ARM *does* however get you some data points that none of these other missions get you. For instance, the current plan is for ARM to bring back both coherent rock samples *and* regolith near the boulder, for geological context. All other asteroid sample return missions have been focused just on regolith. It might turn out that the rocket sample and the regolith around it are practically identical from a mineralogical perspective. Or maybe not. As far as I know we don’t have a lot of samples of asteroid rock and regolith from the same body. Also the rock sample will be relatively large. How homogenous is it? Is it pretty much the exact same all the way through, or is there variability? I’m not sure if these scientific questions alone are enough to justify ARM, but acting like it doesn’t provide some unique data points is I think being unfair to the mission concept. Also, with refueling being a Level 1 requirement, there’s a good chance that for a relatively modest additional cost you could send the ARM spacecraft back out to gather another sample or two.

          But really, ARM only makes sense if your interest in asteroids goes beyond just scientific curiosity. The real selling point of ARM is if you think we can eventually mine asteroids for the benefit of mankind. If you think that’s possible, then getting data on various mining approaches and how well they really work, in a realistic environment makes a ton of sense. I’m an engineer and an entrepreneur, not a scientist, so my interest has always been on how can we take this science and use it to make money and to make space transportation throughout the solar system cheaper and more ubiquitous.

          But if you don’t actually think asteroid mining will ever be practical, or just aren’t interested in that, I could see why you didn’t find ARM very interesting. It wasn’t clear from your comment where you stand on this, and even if you aren’t interested in asteroid mining, I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally wrong about that. Just trying to share another perspective.

          ~Jon

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            The critical need for asteroid mining to be practical is a major reduction in mission cost and a simple method for returning substantial quantities of asteroidal materials directly to Earth. These are not objectives of ARM.

            The specific boulder recovered might be resting on similar regolith, but this might be atypical, or there may be multiple types of aggregation. For science we still need multiple datapoints, and with this mission architecture they are not affordable.

          • Jonathan A. Goff says:
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            Daniel,
            Transportation costs are quite important, but so are proving out mining processes. Right now most asteroid ISRU ideas are just theoretical. Getting some actual experience matters. And ARM does do work with large SEP stages which are one of the more promising methods for getting large quantities of processed materials back from an asteroid eventually. I’m not sure if asteroid mining will ever be shipped back to Earth’s surface (it’s possible) but would more likely be used in support of in-space facilities and settlements.

            You keep saying ARM is unaffordable, but if they didn’t do it using SLS (no really good non-political reason to do so), it wouldn’t cost that much more than OSIRIS-REx. Maybe 2x the cost including launch, but it’s refuelable and brings back 5 orders of magnitude more material. Even with SLS, you’re still only talking 4x the cost of OSIRIS-REx, and with refueling (which is now a L1 requirement), you could easily add another flight for relatively small amounts.

            I agree there is room for improvement, and would prefer an ARM approach grabbing several smaller boulders off of a series of asteroids, or several “mini-ARMs” grabbing boulders from a range of asteroids, but the current approach still has lots of benefit, and relatively small cost once you consider how little of ARM is something NASA wouldn’t be doing anyway without the ARM mission. They’re still going to fly those SLS missions even if they’re just doing figures eights around the Moon. They’re still going to develop the robot arms for satellite servicing, the SEP stage for Mars, etc. Once you boil down the mission unique part of ARM that could actually save by killing the program, it’s probably less than the cost of an OSIRIS-REx type mission.

            ~Jon

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            SEP technology has many applications and should not be tied to the ARM mission, in fact the Administration originally proposed it under Space Technology. Having seen what we have done on Mars with no sample return at all, I would like to see what an SEP-powered multiasteroid probe with in-situ analysis only can do; without sample return visits to multiple objects should be possible. If sample return is really needed, how much would a second or third copy of the OR spacecraft cost now that the R&D is done? It’s when we get away from science and economics and start tying our fate to politics that we are building on shaky ground.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Daniel,

            I could not agree more with your sense that asteroid mining and associated in situ manufacturing is critical. We cannot inhabit space otherwise.

            It’s a very tall mountain to climb, however, with countless missing technologies. Does not ARM take an initial step to both developing some of those technologies and defining other unknown pieces?

            –ms

        • Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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          The big ARM costs appear to be development and the manned part of the mission. If so we could make 4 SEP tugs and send 1 a year to 4 asteroids. Modify the manned part to be slightly longer and the Orion could collect samples from all 4 boulders.

          This would cost a guessed 20% – 30% more?

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            Again I suggest bringing all the material back to Earth or at least LEO. Once at the ISS the boulders could be cut up and downloaded to Earth as space is available on Dragon.

          • Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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            Bringing the boulder back to LEO will approximately double the return time and SEP propellant needed. Possible, but you will lose the support of the SLS and Orion crowd.

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            Not if you do an aerocapture maneuver.

          • Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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            The boulder is a random shaped rock not a carefully designed spacecraft.

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            I was suggesting enclosing the friable boulders and other samples in an aeroshell. Say, with a PICA heatshield. This would allow a quick transition to LEO through an aerobraking maneuver or direct atmospheric entry. Of course if a dense iron body is found, it can probably come in on its own.

            As to the mining itself, this will by necessity be robotic, whether for exploration or production. Orbital refueling prior to Earth departure and SEP both are independant of launch vehicle, in fact refueling reduces the need for heavy lift and allows us to focus on cost effectiveness.

          • brobof says:
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            I would suggest that the return of a lump of nickel iron is a low priority. The study of meteorites is the study of meteors. The reason why the boulder recovery mission is a disappointment to me is that a boulder is highly likely to be similar to any rocky body re-entering the atmosphere. Recovery of a ‘cosmic dust bunny’ OTOH provides us with a sample of material that NEVER survives re-entry.

            For context Philae Rosetta mission. 67P has an overall density equivalent to cigar ash. All its surface features ‘boulders’ have had repeated passes of the sun and are likely to be as hard as… well a rock. And about as interesting.

            The original ARM mission: the recovery of a whole CDB bagged so to preserve its integrity would have provided a real rest for future operations on a surface that is more fluff than substance.
            Naturally the forces of any aerobreaking manoeuvre will destroy such a sample. Rendering its scientific value moot.

            The one good reason for the human aspect coda to this mission is flexibility. A couple of astronauts trying various techniques for just staying in place (to make a bootprint) could save on dozens of Philaes bouncing all over the place. Thus human activity can improve the chance of future autonomous robotic activity.

  3. DTARS says:
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    Here is a cool Asteroid to go capture

    We’re are they now?

    What kind of damage does 42 plus years do to them?

    Are they salvageable?

    Could they be reused?

    People always say we need a lander.

    Well there is half a lander.

  4. TheBrett says:
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    Man, this ARM is such a farce of a mission. They don’t even need to send a crew to lunar orbit to do science with the space rock – why not just have a robotic craft bring it back to Low Earth Orbit to be grabbed?

    At least they won’t cancel SLS when this thing eventually falls to pieces (leading them to just use SLS to do expensive LEO resupply and replacement crew missions to ISS).

  5. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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    NASA could always use this boulder again.
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media

    Unless they are talking about the making of that boulder.

    • Jonathan A. Goff says:
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      To be fair to JPL, I’m pretty sure they’ve already got boulders there of the quality we made for our ARM BAA (thanks for the free advertising though!). My guess at why they don’t just make a styrofoam boulder like we did is that they’re probably trying to take the next step up the fidelity curve. For our proof of concept we mostly cared about the geometry being realistic for our demo. For a $1B+ NASA mission where boulder capture is now a L1 requirement, they’re going to want to do a more thorough job of developing test targets.

      One of the big concerns with asteroid boulders is that we don’t know how friable they are, or how firmly stuck they are into the the regolith. With something like the microspines grippers, you want to make sure you can grasp the boulder without breaking out two chunks. And that involves something with a lot more thought put into it than a Hollywood/Disneyland boulder or what Altius built for our effort. Especially when it also needs to be light enough to pick up in a 1G environment without too crazy of a gravity offload system. We came up with some ideas on how to fabricate a boulder with more realistic mechanical properties as part of our contract, but it wasn’t going to be particularly light or easy to make. That said, I should probably ping my friends at JPL. We’d love to make them a target boulder if they’re really having problems with sourcing one. 🙂

      ~Jon

  6. PoqVaUSA says:
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    Why change the name back to Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) when earlier posts were updated to Asteroid Redirect Mission? The “Redirect” part of the name comes from strategies to cause a measurable change in direction or timing of an asteroid on the order of 450 m diameter, which starts to get to the level of being a precursor for Planetary Protection. It’s not certain how effective the Enhanced Gravity Tractor or the Slow Push strategies will be in altering the course of an asteroid of substantial size, but that’s part of the point, in order to gain experience in that area. Currently the only thing being retrieved will be a boulder, but 10+ tons is substantially different from the Osiris Rex retrieval of a few grams. Osiris Rex will provide samples for scientific analysis, whereas the ARM would provide enough material to be of interest for engineering and manufacturing precursors. Touting the ARM as providing a high value target for human exploration is a disservice to both programs. Once a boulder is retrieved, sure, astronauts will visit it. Neither project should impact the timing of the other.

    A trip to Phobos would at least demonstrate ‘going the distance’, but the Mars orbit it substantially different from an asteroid with near circular orbit at ~1 Au. The trip there and back would take longer, or not result in boulder retrieval, I would think. At least describe the current mission objectives fairly before discussing the merits of lack thereof.

    • Daniel Woodard says:
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      A Phobos-Diemos mission was proposed as early as the first Case For Mars conference back in the last century. It would provide asteroidal material while also contributing to our understanding of Mars. It even has an element critical to mission success, a snappy acronym (PhD).

  7. Christopher Miles says:
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    A Gorn!

    Ok, so this mission is so silly I have to poke some fun: What we really need to be true belivers is “Trek Science”… The brand of pseudo-science that allows one to believe you can make gunpowder and a rudimentary firearm in 20 minutes.

    Or maybe we need a Metron, to simply zap SLS /Orion up to an asteroid.

    Or maybe we can all simply wear Kirk’s shirt from Star Trek V. Hey mission planners – “Go climb a rock”

    Boeing, Lockmart, ULA, ATK- Laughing all the way to the bank.

    I think the mission should actually be called “Fiscal Redirect”

    • mfwright says:
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      “brand of pseudo-science that allows one to believe you can make gunpowder and a rudimentary firearm in 20 minutes.”

      That’s why he is the Captain! Not everyone can graduate from the academy and command a capital ship by the time they’re 35 (and also become the youngest flag officer in StarFleet). Now that pic of the Gorn with the rock is a humorous one, illustrating potential zany requirements of a boulder retrieval mission?

      With all the planning with ARM and SLS, could it eventually lead to some kind of infrastructure for cislunar space? That is to create an economic development zone as Dennis Wingo suggests in this column? https://denniswingo.wordpre

      Getting back to Star Trek analogies, I’m concerned these posts confuse those who are not knowledgable of chemistry, physics, engineering systems, etc. I know many lay people have difficult time separating science from science fiction (but then many educated people have same problem as well).

      • Christopher Miles says:
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        Not to hijack the thread and make it all “Trekkish” but, even in filming the latest Trek movie (release next year)- Fake rock-makin’ abounds. In honor of the coming Trek movie, (and an old sci-fi call back)- I’m going to call this mission- “One Step Beyond”… (common sense)

  8. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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    Make the patch a bear picking up the boulder.
    BEAR = Boulder Extraction for Asteroid Redirection

  9. krocket says:
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    You all seem to be missing the point. NASA is spending about $ 2B / yr to develop the SLS, which has NO identified mission. This silly mission (ARM, whatever) given the SLS something to do that does not have the hundreds of $B price tag of returning to the moon or sending humans to Mars. If science were the purpose there would be no ARM, no SLS, and no talk of human exploration. There are many justifications for human exploration, but collecting science is not one of them.

  10. Zed_WEASEL says:
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    As unpopular as this mission is. It is the only possible mission for the SLS besides the almost flagship scale Europa Clipper mission on the horizon. Since the ARM mission have few development hurdles (landers, hab modules, ascend modules, etc). Otherwise all the SLS is going to fly are Orions around the Moon & LEO since there is no deep space service module for the Orion yet.

    • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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      The Europa probe isn’t a Flagship mission? It certainly falls in the Flagship price range.

      • Zed_WEASEL says:
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        Depends how you count the cost of the SLS launcher as mandated by Congress. Original baseline launcher was the Atlas V 551.

        • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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          Usually launch costs are counted separately from the probe / mission operations costs, right?

          • Zed_WEASEL says:
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            As I understand it. The mission don’t get charge for the launcher, but the final total cost includes everything. Still unclear which NASA directorate foots the SLS cost.

    • Bernardo de la Paz says:
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      ISS replacement.

  11. anirprof says:
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    Keith,

    The “conference” vs “meeting” issue, and conferences being ‘hard’, is not a problem NASA created for itself. This has been imposed govt-wide by OPM, in the wake of the 2012 scandal where GSA employees partied it up at a so-called conference of their in Las Vegas.

    At _all_ federal agencies, now, employee attendance at any conference requires approval at extremely senior levels. For the agency I know best, at the Deputy Assistant Secretary level. That means, for one rank-and-file employee to attend even a one day conference on the other side of town, a Senate-confirmed executive has to sign off, and per OPM that can not be delegated. Again, in the agency I know, requests to attend anything deemed a ‘conference’ have to be submitted at least three months in advance and require a whole packet of paperwork justifying necessity, cost-reduction, etc. Attendance of federal scientists at scientific events is way, way down as a result, at places like CDC, USGS, DoD, and yes, NASA. See this WaPo article:

    http://www.washingtonpost.c

    So for JPL, whether the event is a ‘conference’ or ‘meeting’ per OPM’s legal criteria is hugely important.

    • kcowing says:
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      And its only ‘hugely important’ because NASA has not bitten the bullet and devoted resources – i.e.people dedicated to this task – so as to deal with these requirements. Instead, they act as if each and every new conference someone wants to attend is a new calamity with which they are incapable of handling.

      • cb450sc says:
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        Part of that problem is that the approvals aren’t local, they have to rattle through many layers all the way up to HQ. The end result is that approval can be random – anyone anywhere along the chain can raise a question which kill the process. The result is that after awhile people give up in frustration. I myself jump through hoops and actually spend my own money to avoid using NASA travel, since the federal requirements are so onerous. And since they don’t apply at a university level, it places scientists that work for NASA at a big relative disadvantage.

        • anirprof says:
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          This has been exactly true in my agency (which is not NASA) as well. The ‘requirements’ change from week to week, and conference to conference, and what seems like an easy approval one time becomes a last-minute ‘no’ when an almost identical event follows. Even the legal guidance from the Undersecretary’s office on the very definition of ‘conference’ keeps changing, in some cases suddenly throwing long-planned events that had previously been kosher into doubt.

          Assuming this is what it is like at NASA too, then yes, it is a NASA problem in the sense that the top agency executives are at fault. There may not be much that can be done better at the JPL level, however. And the fact that such churn and confusion seems to be happening in multiple agencies makes me wonder if some of the problem stems from ambiguity and instability in what OPM (or Congressional overseers) is telling the agencies.

  12. Steven Rappolee says:
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    I suggested online at this conference that they should be looking for “rolling rocks” IE boulders that “might” be free of some cohesion with the surface

    http://yellowdragonblog.com

  13. Bernardo de la Paz says:
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    Instead of redirecting a boulder to lunar orbit and then orbiting the moon to study the boulder, how about just going to the lunar surface to get a boulder? Plenty of them there.

    • brobof says:
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      See my reply to Daniel above. Sometimes a boulder isn’t a boulder! The mission –as being ever more cautiously envisaged– will probably duplicate the science return of Apollo. Been there done that… At least a Phobos mission has some future return. Although, as I have indicated, 2010 TK7 is my hard target of choice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

    • Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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      That requires development of a lander and ascent stage. See Lunar CATALYST initiative.

      • Bernardo de la Paz says:
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        Shhh….
        Don’t give away – call it the “asteroid surface retrieval stage” or something like that, at least until the current lunar-phobic players are no longer in charge.