This month, a NASA spacecraft will come within seven miles of an asteroid. No, it’s not a last-ditch effort to save the Earth from destruction– it’s part of a series of programs to learn more about asteroids and what they may mean to us in the future. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
The asteroid encounter is the first destination for NASA’s Deep Space 1, a spacecraft which is exploring a region of our solar system between the Earth and Mars. The mission will test out new technologies, but the interest in asteroids isn’t only purely scientific research.
“There’s a lot of interest in this and there’s a huge commercialization of space that’s occurring right now.”
Fran Bagenal is an associate professor of planetary sciences at the University of Colorado in Boulder and a collaborator on the Deep Space 1 mission.
“This is mainly in terms of telecommunications, putting up lots satellites. But there are a group of people who are interested in resources mining and see that there might be some economic value in going to asteroids that may have large quantities of what are quite rare minerals or rare metals, in particular, here on Earth, and so this would be a way of getting those rare metals. The economic viability of all this has yet to be proven. We haven’t actually got a good sense of what minerals are available on the asteroids yet and so whether or not it’s economically feasible is very much in the future.”
Deep Space 1 will photograph and measure the asteroid, as well as conduct tests to see if it has an electromagnetic field. These tests may provide clues about what the asteroid’s core is made of.
Additional funding for Pulse of the Planet has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.