Asteroid Retrieval Initiative, NASA, Washington, D.C., USA

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NASA

science.nasa.gov/mission/dart

dart.jhuapl.edu

Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization on Wikipedia

Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) on Wikipedia

The Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization (ARU) mission, also known as the Asteroid Initiative, is a potential future space mission proposed by NASA. Still in the early stages of planning and development, the ARU is a mission to bring a small near-Earth asteroid into lunar orbit, where it could be further analyzed both by unmanned craft and by a future manned mission. NASA hopes to complete the mission, which may take anywhere from six to ten years, in time to accomplish its stated goal of landing humans on an asteroid by 2025.

The Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization mission, excluding any manned missions to an asteroid which it may enable, is predicted by a Keck Institute for Space Studies study to cost about $2.6 billion, of which $105 million has been proposed for 2014. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has stated that: "This mission represents an unprecedented technological feat that will lead to new scientific discoveries and technological capabilities and help protect our home planet."

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Asteroid Retrieval Initiative
April 10, 2013

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Asteroid Redirect Mission: Concept Highlights

Published on Mar 26, 2014

A one-minute video of Asteroid Redirect Mission highlights featuring concepts of capturing an asteroid by encapsulation and robotically collecting a boulder from its surface.

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Asteroid Redirect Mission: Boulder Collection Concept

Published on Mar 26, 2014

This animation illustrates one of two robotic mission concepts under consideration for NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission. In this concept, the Asteroid Redirect Vehicle descends to the surface of a large asteroid and robotically collects a boulder from its surface.

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Asteroid Redirect Mission: Crew Segment

Published on Mar 25, 2015

NASA announced the next step in the plan to retrieve an asteroid boulder from a near-Earth asteroid and redirect it into a stable orbit around the moon to carry out human exploration missions, all in support of advancing the nation's journey to Mars. For NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), a robotic spacecraft will capture a boulder from the surface of an asteroid for exploration by astronauts in the mid-2020s to test a number of new capabilities needed for future human expeditions to deep space, including to Mars. This animation illustrates the crewed part of ARM, showing how astronauts will travel to the asteroid using NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft, investigate the boulder and return a sample of the asteroid back to Earth.

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Asteroid Redirect Mission: Robotic Segment

Published on Mar 26, 2015

This concept animation illustrates the robotic segment of NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission. The Asteroid Redirect Vehicle, powered by solar electric propulsion, travels to a large asteroid to robotically collect a boulder from its surface. It then conducts a "gravity tractor" planetary defense demonstration on the asteroid before bringing the captured boulder to a stable orbit around the moon where astronauts can visit, explore, and sample it.

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ESA’s Asteroid Impact Mission: the reason why

Published on Apr 20, 2016

ESA’s Asteroid Impact Mission, currently under study for launch in 2020 and arrival in 2022, would be humanity’s first probe to a double asteroid system. Targeting an approximately 180-m diameter asteroid – around the same size as the Great Pyramid of Giza – AIM would spend a busy six months gathering data on its surface and inner structure.

It would then perform before-and-after measurements as the NASA-led Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft impacts straight into it, in an attempt to change the asteroid’s orbital period – marking the very first time that humanity shifts a Solar System object in a measurable way. Success would make it possible to consider carrying out such an operation again if an incoming asteroid ever threatened our planet. The two missions combined are called the Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment, or ‘AIDA’ for short.

But why do we need to plan such a ground-breaking experiment? Astrophysicist and Queen guitarist Brian May, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, the UK’s Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield share their own thoughts.