[meteorite-list] Professor Proposes Asteroid Mission (Hera)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Aug 1 12:10:52 2005
Message-ID: <200508011609.j71G9qa25462_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2005/08/01/front/03nasa.txt

Professor Aims For Asteroids
UA SPACE DIRECTOR PITCHES $500 MILLION NASA MISSION
By Jeff Smith
The Morning News (Arkansas)
August 1, 2005

FAYETTEVILLE -- A piece of rock 50 million to 100 million miles away
could explain the origins of life and possibly preserve life for
generations.

Derek Sears, director of the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary
Sciences, leads an international group of 20 scientists pitching a $500
million mission to NASA.

The trip to a near-Earth asteroid would collect samples that Sears and
his team would study at various sites across the world, although the
University of Arkansas would play a leadership role, he said.

Asteroids serve as mostly unaltered relics from the beginning of the
solar system and could answer what really happened millions of years ago
to form the Earth, Sears said.

"It was there when it happened," said Sears, the W.M. Keck Professor of
Space and Planetary Sciences.

The mission, termed Hera after the Greek goddess and wife of Zeus, would
also detail what materials compose an asteroid. Scientists and the Air
Force through the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Near Earth Asteroid
Tracking project could determine how best to deflect asteroids from
hitting Earth.

The NEAT project team reports that near-Earth asteroids about 1
kilometer in diameter could pose a global disaster, but one hitting
Earth likely occurs every 1,000 centuries on average. There are believed
to be 1,000 to 2,000 such large asteroids, although the team has
identified roughly 100, according to its Web site.

"If the big one hits, it is Armageddon," Sears said. "So what are we
going to do? Are we going to watch them whiz by and nearly miss?"

The Hera project could also provide NASA with valuable information
before attempting to reach Mars, Sears said, because his mission would
require half the technology needed for a Mars trip.

NASA reached the asteroid Eros in 2001 through the Near Earth Asteroid
Rendezvous mission that captured thousands of photos. Sears wants to
take NASA's success one step further by collecting samples from an asteroid.

"Six years ago, you wouldn't dare propose it because they would have
thought you were nuts," he said.

The science mission would require a spacecraft to hover over the
asteroid while maintaining its 67,000-mile-per-hour speed and
trajectory. The spacecraft would drill into the asteroid to collect
samples and then bounce off the rock and return to Earth.

"You're trying to operate all of this 50 million miles away and you're
trying to make those two things not kill each other," said Sears, who
has wanted to be an astronaut since age 11.

Sears has worked on the Hera project since 1998 and is collaborating
with Stacy Weinstein, a group supervisor at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, a NASA center staffed and managed by the California
Institute of Technology.

CalTech is paying two-thirds of the $1 million needed to submit the
proposal to NASA, and the UA is providing a third.

"Derek is extremely knowledgeable, extremely energetic, really is a
broad thinker and is refreshingly nice to work with," Weinstein said.

Sears and his counterparts across the nation and four in England are
building prototypes that will help the spacecraft collect samples from
the asteroid.

Sears spreads part of the craft out on the old UA Museum exhibit floor
behind a large dinosaur that many scientists believe became extinct
because of an asteroid.

The proposal is part of a grant competition at NASA, which will select
two or three projects a year to provide an additional $1 million for a
more detailed concept proposal, Sears said.

The Hera project missed out on NASA funding last year, but Sears is
optimistic this fall. About 20 groups submit proposals each year, and
Sears said he has competition from three similar near-Earth asteroid
proposals.

If selected, the Hera project would take six years to build with a
possible launch in 2012. The four-year mission would bring back rocks
from asteroids to Arkansas, where Sears and his team, including about a
dozen students, would evaluate them.

The Arkansas space center would become one of the main centers for
analyzing asteroids in the world if the project is approved, Sears said.

UA Provost Bob Smith said the Hera Project, the largest proposal to date
by the university to a federal agency, would bring enormous resources
and prestige to the state.

"To imagine the University of Arkansas in the lead of such a phenomenal
large grant and in the lead among highly prestigious institutions would
have probably been thought unimaginable not too many years ago," he said.
Received on Mon 01 Aug 2005 12:09:51 PM PDT