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BOSTON — Rather than trying to capture asteroids or send shuttles straight to Mars, NASA should use near-Earth asteroids as stepping stones, according to an expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
NASA’s current focus on trying to capture an asteroid by the end of the decade, through the Asteroid Redirect Mission, is a distraction from more practical and inexpensive ways to advance interplanetary flight, MIT planetary science professor Richard Binzel wrote in the journal Nature, which was published Wednesday.
He said that Mars is too far for us to reach now, but NASA can focus on visiting near-Earth asteroids.
“Asteroids whose orbits pass between Earth and Mars offer a range of milestone destinations for testing distance and duration capabilities of human spaceflight,” he wrote in Nature. “The first missions might last weeks and not go far; later excursions could last months and venture successively farther into interplanetary space, proving that Mars is within our grasp.”
So far, around 10 million near-Earth asteroids larger than 10 meters in diameter have been discovered, according to MIT. Landing on an asteroid and then returning to Earth would be much easier than doing the same thing on Mars, Binzel claims.
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NASA is reportedly exploring a plan to capture an asteroid and drag it into the moon's orbit, something officials say may help one day put a man on Mars.“Asteroids can be friends, not foes,” Binzel wrote in Nature. “For nearly four decades, NEAs have been recognized as human spaceflight destinations that are more accessible than the lunar surface. Owing to their minuscule gravity fields, a rendezvous with an asteroid merely entails sidling up and flying alongside one, with no need for a specialized landing craft.”
The hardware needed to contain and redirect and asteroid for ARM are “dead-end elements with no value for long duration crewed space travel," he wrote.
“Delivering a supply module to lunar space would be a more sensible way to demonstrate solar-electric propulsion and benefit astronaut safety,” he wrote. “Conveying to the public that reaching Mars requires patient and diligent progression in capabilities is the honest alternative to distracting them with a one-off costly stunt.”
Binzel’s full analysis of ARM can be viewed for free online.
