Proceedings

EPJ Plus Highlight - Astronauts to bring asteroid back into lunar orbit

How to bring an asteroid back nearer to lunar orbit. Credits: Keck Institute for Space Studies report

Italian Space Agency presents plans to develop a robotic solar-powered spacecraft capable of displacing a near-Earth asteroid towards lunar orbit for ease of study

Future space exploration aims to fly further from Earth than ever before. Now, Italian Space Agency scientists have expressed an interest in contributing to the development of robotic technologies to bring an asteroid from beyond lunar orbit back into closer reach in order to better study it. In a paper published in EPJ Plus, Marco Tantardini and Enrico Flamini from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) make the case for taking part in the robotic phase of the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM). In addition to taking manned spaceflights deeper into space than ever before, the proposed mission would also bring some benefit for planetary science.

Further, the mission has potential implications for a field called planetary defence. The mission could even help to validate a concept known as enhanced gravity tractor. This involves relying on a spacecraft to deflect a potentially hazardous asteroid that might impact Earth, without physically contacting it. Instead, it uses its gravitational field to transmit the required impulse.

The next step for human space exploration after the International Space Station is to send astronauts on a Near Earth Asteroid by 2025, as planned by NASA. This constitutes an intermediate step towards future manned missions to Mars. The planned ARM mission has been part of the NASA program since 2013.

The robotic spacecraft would cruise in deep space towards a near-Earth asteroid, using a technology called advanced Solar Electric Propulsion. Under the proposed plan, Italy would contribute by enhancing the carrying capacity of that spacecraft.

The robotic spacecraft would be capable of approaching the asteroid, characterising it, capturing it, and then redirecting it to a final stable orbit that would be closer to Earth and thus easier for astronauts to reach. Far space exploration is only beginning.

This was our first experience of publishing with EPJ Web of Conferences. We contacted the publisher in the middle of September, just one month prior to the Conference, but everything went through smoothly. We have had published MNPS Proceedings with different publishers in the past, and would like to tell that the EPJ Web of Conferences team was probably the best, very quick, helpful and interactive. Typically, we were getting responses from EPJ Web of Conferences team within less than an hour and have had help at every production stage.
We are very thankful to Solange Guenot, Web of Conferences Publishing Editor, and Isabelle Houlbert, Web of Conferences Production Editor, for their support. These ladies are top-level professionals, who made a great contribution to the success of this issue. We are fully satisfied with the publication of the Conference Proceedings and are looking forward to further cooperation. The publication was very fast, easy and of high quality. My colleagues and I strongly recommend EPJ Web of Conferences to anyone, who is interested in quick high-quality publication of conference proceedings.

On behalf of the Organizing and Program Committees and Editorial Team of MNPS-2019, Dr. Alexey B. Nadykto, Moscow State Technological University “STANKIN”, Moscow, Russia. EPJ Web of Conferences vol. 224 (2019)

ISSN: 2100-014X (Electronic Edition)

© EDP Sciences