Innovative use for Orion: go and look at a captured asteroid placed in orbit round the Moon

[muriel_volestrangler]

Or a multi-ton boulder from an asteroid:

What Is NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission?

June 27, 2014

NASA is developing a first-ever mission to identify, capture and redirect a near-Earth asteroid to a stable orbit around the moon, where astronauts will explore it in the 2020s, returning with samples. This Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) is part of NASA’s plan to advance the new technologies and spaceflight experience needed for humans to pioneer Mars in the 2030s.

NASA has identified multiple candidate asteroids and continues the search for one that could be redirected to near the moon in the 2020s. Since the announcement of the Asteroid Initiative in 2013, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observation Program has catalogued more than 1,000 new near-Earth asteroids discovered by various search teams. Of those identified so far, six could be good candidates for ARM. Scientists anticipate many more will be discovered over the next few years, and NASA will study their velocity, orbit, size and spin before deciding on the target asteroid for the ARM mission.
...
NASA plans to launch the ARM robotic spacecraft at the end of this decade. The agency is working on two concepts for the capture: one would capture an asteroid using an inflatable system, similar to a bag, and the other would capture a boulder off of a much larger asteroid using a robotic arm. The agency will choose one of the two concepts in late 2014.

After an asteroid mass is captured, the spacecraft will redirect it to a stable orbit around the moon called a “Distant Retrograde Orbit.” Astronauts aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft, launched from a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, will explore the asteroid in the mid-2020s.

http://www.nasa.gov/content/what-is-nasa-s-asteroid-redirect-mission/

I suspect taking a boulder is more likely - spotting a suitably small asteroid in a suitable orbit close to Earth sounds a long shot to me. But, anyway, this would be the first 'new' thing Orion does - as opposed to a return to the Moon. The 'Distant Retrograde Orbit' is also known as a 'quarantine orbit' - very stable, so something there should stay there, and almost at the edge of Earth's gravity well, so it doesn't take too much energy to put something there.

http://ccar.colorado.edu/asen5050/projects/projects_2013/Johnson_Kirstyn/finalorbit.html

[Warren DeMontague]

1. It's an interesting idea.

I suppose from what I've read recently part of the idea is to act as a nearer-Earth "dress rehearsal" for a more distant asteroid rendezvous-- which makes sense to me.

[brush]

2. Hope they've figured out what happens to the moon's effect on our tides here

Don't want any unforeseen tsunamis hitting us because the tides have been changed by the asteriod's orbit around the moon.

[drm604]

4. An asteroid would be a miniscule percentage of the size of the moon.

Way to small to have any meaningful gravitational effects.

[brush]

6. but you don't really know what effect it would have.

The moon is a lot smaller than the earth but has a huge effect on it's oceans.

Unintended consequences of human activity have effected our environment quite a lot — fossil fuel burning contribution to climate change for example — I hope this is not another instance of human activity that might burn us down the road.

What's that phrase, "don't mess with mother nature."

[drm604]

8. Yeah, I do. And the people at NASA certainly do.

It's basic Newtonian physics, something we understand very well. The moon is a large fraction of the size of the earth, therefore it affects the Earth. There's no comparison between that and the moon versus an asteroid. A few years back an asteroid passed the Earth within the orbit of the moon, no one expected any effects and there were none. An asteroid is tiny compared to the earth or the moon.

NASA does not have the capability to move something that has enough mass to make a difference gravitationally.

[brush]

10. I hope you're right. nt

[Posteritatis]

11. You're kind of assuming "I personally don't know this" means "nobody knows this."

I, personally, don't know the mass of the asteroid they're talking about, but if it's anything moveable by anything we can conceive of building in the next few generations it would in fact be completely trivial to calculate its precise gravitational effect on the Earth (and the moon, and the Earth-and-the-moon) depending on its relative position.

Those sorts of mechanics, physicists and engineers have had down cold for decades. It's how we launched a probe in 2006 and slung it around multiple planets in a way that would speed it up to meet Pluto at a precise point years and billions of miles later.

There's nothing whatsoever in the solar system we're even able of thinking about moving that would be able to affect tides on Earth. Everything's that could is orders upon orders of magnitude too big for us to shift.

[ret5hd]

12. Just think what happens if we BOMB THE MOON!!!

[Posteritatis]

13. Man, I haven't had a good flashback to that thread in months. (nt)

[ret5hd]

14. wasn't it great???

now i will say it the way i really mean it:

WASN"T IT GREAT!!!!!!!!

[Posteritatis]

15. Easily the high water mark for that kind of, uh, that-ness. (nt)

[ret5hd]

16. "that-ness"...yes, that's what it was. "That-ness".

and yes, i enjoyed it.

[Posteritatis]

5. If NASA could move asteroids big enough to affect the tides they wouldn't need to. (nt)

[brush]

7. I'm sorry, what does that mean? nt

[drm604]

9. Exactly.

Anything that could have any noticeable gravitational affect on either the Earth or the moon would be too massive for NASA to move.

[longship]

3. That would be a time to embrace the horror.

As Steve Buscemi said in horrible Armageddon.

Rockhound: Guess what guys, it's time to embrace the horror! Look, we've got front row tickets to the end of the earth!

Classic Buscemi.