Finding a Practical Asteroid Strategy

Gump, David

doi:10.1089/space.2013.0008

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The primary business of Planetary Resources is defined as prospecting and mining asteroids with high concentrations of water and precious metals, but they are also collaborating with NASA in detecting and tracking NEOs, and readying to launch the Arkyd 100 as the first private low-cost space telescope, with follow-up of several more Arkyd 200s (Lewicki et al 2013). Deep Space Industries is preparing a series of low-cost robotic fly-by and rendezvous spacecrafts, based on cubesat technologies, to gather data on small PHAtype asteroids (Gump 2013). They currently contemplate a round-trip craft that will be able to return 25 to 50 kg of samples to near-Earth space, or even directly to Earth.…”

Section: New Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prospect for UV observations from the Moon

Safonova

Mathew

Mohan

et al. 2014

Astrophys Space Sci

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Space astronomy in the last 40 years has largely been done from spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO) for which the technology is proven and delivery mechanisms are readily available. However, new opportunities are arising with the surge in commercial aerospace missions. We describe here one such possibility: deploying a small instrument on the Moon. This can be accomplished by flying onboard the Indian entry to the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition, Team Indus mission, which is expected to deliver a nearly 30 kgs of payloads to the Moon, with a rover as its primary payload. We propose to mount a wide-field far-UV (130--180 nm) imaging telescope as a payload on the Team Indus lander. Our baseline operation is a fixed zenith pointing but with the option of a mechanism to allow observations of different attitudes. Pointing towards intermediate ecliptic latitude (50 deg or above) ensures that the Sun is at least 40 deg off the line of sight at all times. In this position, the telescope can cover higher galactic latitudes as well as parts of Galactic plane. The scientific objectives of such a prospective are delineated and discussed.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figure

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Section: New Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%