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SpaceDev And SEI Win International Asteroid Mission Design Contest
Poway CA (SPX) Mar 03, 2008 SpaceDev has announced that along with teammate SpaceWorks Engineering, Inc. (SEI), it has won first place in The Planetary Society's Apophis Mission Design Competition. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) were co-sponsors of this innovative competition. The sponsors received 37 mission proposals from 20 countries on 6 continents. Apophis is a Near-Earth Asteroid that will pass between Earth and the geostationary satellite belt in April 2029. The asteroid's orbit cannot be determined to sufficient fidelity via ground-based observations whether, during this close encounter, it will go through one of the areas in space called keyholes where a perturbation by Earth's gravity would cause the asteroid to impact Earth on a subsequent return, most likely in 2036. The Foresight spacecraft designed by SEI and SpaceDev would travel to Apophis and perform proximity observations that would significantly refine the orbit estimate, allowing an informed decision as to whether a space mission should be planned to deflect the asteroid prior to the 2029 Earth-pass; deflection would be drastically more difficult to achieve after passage through a keyhole. "SpaceDev is honored by this award, and we are proud of the design produced by our collaboration with SEI," said Mark N. Sirangelo, SpaceDev's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "We thank The Planetary Society, NASA and ESA for sponsoring the competition, which we expect to be influential in advancing the objectives of Near Earth Object threat mitigation. We believe that low-cost space missions will play a fundamental role in this critical work, and we look forward to contributing our capabilities to such efforts." Related Links SpaceDev SpaceWorks Engineering Asteroid and Comet Mission News, Science and Technology
Arecibo Observatory Astronomers Discover First Near-Earth Triple Asteroid
Ithaca NY (SPX) Feb 15, 2008Once considered just your average single asteroid, 2001 SN263 has now been revealed as the first near-Earth triple asteroid ever found. The asteroid -- with three bodies orbiting each other -- was discovered this week by astronomers at the radar telescope at the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. |
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