[meteorite-list] NASA Announces Media Opportunities for Asteroid Forum

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 14:02:31 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201403252102.s2PL2V08017440_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

March 25, 2014
     
NASA Announces Media Opportunities for Asteroid Forum

Media are invited to attend the agency's Asteroid Initiative Opportunities
Forum on Wednesday, March 26, at NASA Headquarters in Washington or
participate virtually. NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot will be
available to speak with media in-person following the 12:30-4:30 p.m. EDT
event.

The forum, which is open to industry, academia and interested individuals,
will provide status updates from ongoing asteroid redirect mission studies
and summarize how responses to a 2013 Request for Information (RFI) are
helping improve mission planning activities. The event will also highlight
opportunities for public engagement in the mission and activities associated
with the Asteroid Grand Challenge.

Seating is limited. Media who wish to attend the forum must contact Sarah
Ramsey no later than 9 a.m. Wednesday at sarah.ramsey at nasa.gov or
202-358-1694.

The forum will be carried on NASA Television and streamed online for virtual
participants. Virtual participants may ask questions throughout the event on
Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA. For more information on how to view the
event, go to:

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidforum

NASA's Asteroid Initiative includes two separate, but related activities:
the Asteroid Redirect Mission and the Asteroid Grand Challenge. NASA
currently is developing concepts for the mission, which will employ a robotic
spacecraft to capture a small near-Earth asteroid, or remove a boulder from
the surface of a larger asteroid, and redirect it into a stable orbit around
the moon. Astronauts will travel aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft, launched on
the Space Launch System rocket, to rendezvous in lunar orbit with the
captured asteroid material. Once there, they will collect samples to return
to Earth for study. New capabilities and systems tested through the Asteroid
Initiative will advance NASA's ultimate goal of sending humans to Mars.

The grand challenge is seeking the best ideas to find all asteroid threats to
human populations, and to accelerate the work that NASA is already doing for
planetary defense.

The forum follows a Broad Agency Announcement issued March 21, which solicits
ideas for alternate capture system concepts, rendezvous sensor systems,
secondary payloads, feasibility studies on adapting commercial spacecraft
buses for the mission and commercial and international partnership
opportunities for the mission. For more information about the announcement,
visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/1iVytcG

More than 400 responses were submitted in response to the 2013 asteroid
initiative RFI, 96 of which were explored in depth at a two-part workshop in
Houston in late 2013. NASA recently released a full report on the workshop
activities and recommendations, which can be viewed at:

http://go.nasa.gov/Lgn9eq

For more information about upcoming events and NASA's Asteroid Initiative,
visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative

-end-

Sarah Ramsey / Trent J. Perrotto
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1694 / 202-358-1100
sarah.ramsey at nasa.gov / trent.j.perrotto at nasa.gov
Received on Tue 25 Mar 2014 05:02:31 PM PDT