Manned Orion mission to an asteroid... Options

[David]

If the asteroid has as much void space and is as loosely packed as Itokawa, I think it would be risky to rely on spikes or pitons to tie yourself down.

Oh dear. I can just imagine: "Astronauts accidentally destroyed Asteroid 963714288 today. While attempting to drill a spike into the asteroid's crust, it split into two large pieces and several smaller ones. The astronauts escaped injury, but the Minor Planet Center is holding an emergency meeting to discuss whether to give each of the pieces a new number."

[Stu]

Oh dear. I can just imagine: "Astronauts accidentally destroyed Asteroid 963714288 today. While attempting to drill a spike into the asteroid's crust, it split into two large pieces and several smaller ones. The astronauts escaped injury, but the Minor Planet Center is holding an emergency meeting to discuss whether to give each of the pieces a new number."

"And in a further development, the IAU has announced that each astronaut will now be officially classified a planet, because they have very effectively cleared their area..."

[marsbug]

Depending on the forthcoming US election results the idea may get major boost.....

Going somwhat off topic; I recently had a discussion here about plans to land an unmanned observatory on the moon, I wonder, would it make any more sense to land said observatory on an earth crossing asteroid? Especially as earth to asteroicd missions may take place anyway as rehearsals for dealing with one on a collision course? And, whilst I've got this buzzing about my brain, what science could be done during a manned mission to a NEO?

EDIT: I should make it very clear I'm not trying to start a manned vs unmanned debate, I'm curious as to what science could be done in the specific case of a manned mission, I'm mentioning the unmanned lunar observatory only because theres a good chance it's designers plan to service it, by a manned lunar presence, and the thought crossed my mind that a visit by an orion module could do the same thing for an asteroid based observatory.

[rogelio]

Most asteroid rotation periods are in the neighborhood of just a few hours; it would be awkward to have to slough your telescope around at 60° per hour to track an object... Now, the moon rotates about two orders of magnitude more slowly...

[marsbug]

I'd not considered that asteroids have their own rotation, thanks rogelio.

[rogelio]

(Crazy thought) Emplace a thruster on the asteroid’s surface to slow and eventually stop its rotation prior to building your observatory. Might not take that long if the asteroid was small enough, and you had a nuclear reactor chugging away for ten years.

[marsbug]

That makes sense, although I not sure I see it happening. What I was wondering was since we may well do orion missions to asteroids anyway, what experiments could be piggybacked easily on a manned mission, and what experiments would it make sense to send?

[David]

(Crazy thought) Emplace a thruster on the asteroid’s surface to slow and eventually stop its rotation prior to building your observatory. Might not take that long if the asteroid was small enough, and you had a nuclear reactor chugging away for ten years.

I'd like to see a calculation of the forces involved.

But even if you could make an asteroid "stationary", how long would it last? Wouldn't it just become very susceptible to even low-speed impacts, and start tumbling chaotically -- too slow, maybe, to be noticeable on a large scale, but enough to complicate your observatory work?

[Phil Stooke]

The most obvious science to do on the asteroid would be geology. For instance, if you put people on Eros, they could sample the basic regolith material, and the bright markings in larger craters, and the material of the ponds... including trying to understand the processes which have created the ponds. Then there would be internal observations usig seismic profiling or radar - is the object monolithic, a fractured monolith, or a rubble pile?

Maybe it's just my background, but geology seems the most obvious thing to do. Astronomy doesn't seem to be a good reason to go to an asteroid.

Phil

[ilbasso]

Just build the observatory out in deep space - you'll have a more stable (and easier to stabilize) platform than if you haul all the materials to an asteroid and build the observatory there.