NASA To Hold Asteroid Initiative Forum

NASA is moving its Asteroid Initiative forward by holding an Asteroid Intiative Opportunities Forum on March 26 at NASA Headquarters in Washington,DC.The Forum will gather industry,academia and interested individuals for an update on Asteroid Redirect Mission studies,and summarise how responses to NASA's 2013 Request For Information will benefit the program.*
The two-part Asteroid Intitiative consists,first,of the deep space Asteroid Redirect Mission,which will send a robotic spacecraft to capture a near-earth asteroid or remove a boulder from a larger asteroid,then redirect the object to a stable lunar orbit for rendevous with a manned Orion spacecraft.At that point,Orion astronauts will remove samples from the captured object and carry them back to earth for study.It may be the farthest from earth that humans have ever ventured,and will in any case be an interim step to a Mars mission.*
The March 26 Forum will seek ideas for alternate capture system concepts;rendevous sensor systems;secondary payloads;feasibility studies on adapting commercial spacecraft buses for the mission;and commercial and international partnership opportunities for the mission.*
The second part of the Asteroid Initiative is The Grand Asteroid Challenge,which seeks the best ideas for finding all asteroids that threaten humanity,and accelerating NASA'a existing work on planetary defence.*
The Orion spacecraft is scheduled to undergo its first unmanned flight test,Exploration Flight Test-1,in September 2014.It will be launched on a Delta IV Heavy rocket.The Orion and its service module will reach a distance ten times farther than low-earth orbit.The Orion will then jettison the SM and return to earth,spalshing down in the ocean and being retrieved by a US Navy ship with a well deck.The test will evaluate Orion's heat shield and parachute systems,as well as capsule recovery procedures,in preparation for manned missions atop the new Space Launch System deep space rocket.Lockheed Martin is prime contractor for the Orion spacecraft.*
Lockheed Martin(LMT)