Mission to Lasso an Asteroid: An Update

NASA chief Charles Bolden checked in on the agency’s progress in its mission to lasso an asteroid on Thursday, approximately a month after President Barack Obama announced in his 2014 budget a full $105 million to get the mission, which may eventually cost more than $2.6 billion, started.

In particular, Bolden inspected a prototype spacecraft engine built by engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and Glenn Research Center in Ohio.

Rather than conventional chemical fuel, the engine is designed to run via ion propulsion, which fires beams of electrically charged atoms in order to propel the spacecraft.

Such a model is preferred for deep space journeys over conventional gas-guzzlers due to its fuel efficiency.

The overall mission, that of putting a leash on an asteroid in order to drag it closer to the moon, comes as a step in achieving the mandate given to NASA by the government to fly humans to an asteroid as part of an ultimate goal of flying them to Mars.

Furthermore, NASA reports that the effort is also part of a larger one to develop a way of accurately and effectively deflecting asteroids away from Earth.

“Anytime that you can get up close to an asteroid and understand its composition and its characteristics … that’s getting to know the enemy,” the Associated Press reports Don Yeomans, who head NASA’s Near Earth Object Program, as saying.

Initially, scientists considered sending astronauts to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter – an idea that was thrown out due to the large costs.

The new idea, however, Bolden called “ingenious,” according to the Associated Press.

“If you can’t get to the asteroid, bring the asteroid to you,” he said.

And while the asteroid has yet to be selected (though they say there are at least a dozen they have in mind for the mission), the goal is to launch an ion-powered spacecraft by 2019 that would then be parked near the Moon. From there, the team would hop aboard an Orion space capsule that’s under development and explore the rock in 2021.

Engine testing is scheduled to start next year.