[meteorite-list] NASA Sees Enthusiastic Response to Asteroid Call for Ideas

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 22:19:02 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201307270519.r6R5J2uY010102_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

July 26, 2013

Sarah Ramsey
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1694
sarah.ramsey at nasa.gov

RELEASE 13-238

NASA Sees Enthusiastic Response to Asteroid Call for Ideas

WASHINGTON -- NASA has received more than 400 responses to its request for
information (RFI) on the agency's asteroid initiative, Deputy Administrator
Lori Garver announced Friday.

"Under our plan, we're increasing the identification, tracking and
exploration of asteroids, and the response to this initiative has been
gratifying," said Garver, speaking at the Space Frontier Foundation's
NewSpace 2013 conference in San Jose, Calif. "The aerospace industry,
innovative small businesses and citizen scientists have many creative ideas
and strategies for carrying out our asteroid exploration mission and helping
us to protect our home planet from dangerous near-Earth objects."

Released June 18, the RFI was the first opportunity for industry and other
potential partners, including private individuals, to offer ideas on planning
for NASA's mission to redirect an asteroid for exploration by astronauts and
the agency's asteroid grand challenge.

Garver noted?? about a third of the responses were in areas relevant to the
asteroid grand challenge, which is to identify all asteroid threats to human
population and know what to do about them. All other responses were related
to the five mission components.

All the responses are being evaluated and rated. NASA will explore the highly
rated responses for inclusion in future planning during a public workshop in
September.

Grand challenges are ambitious goals on a national or global scale that
capture the imagination and demand advances in innovation and breakthroughs
in science and technology. NASA's asteroid grand challenge will support
planetary defense by use of multi-disciplinary collaborations and a variety
of partnerships with other government agencies, international partners,
industry, academia, and citizen scientists.

The asteroid grand challenge complements NASA's mission to find and capture a
near-Earth asteroid, redirect it to a stable lunar orbit and send humans to
study it. The asteroid redirect mission is included in President Obama's
fiscal year 2014 budget request for NASA, and leverages the agency's progress
on its Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft and cutting-edge
technology development. The mission is one step in NASA's plan to send humans
to Mars in the 2030s.

For more information about NASA's asteroid initiative, visit:??

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative

-end-
Received on Sat 27 Jul 2013 01:19:02 AM PDT