Capture of Asteroids and Transport of Asteroid Materials to Earth
Abstract
Recently there has been much discussion on the capture of asteroids or mining the asteroids. While the technology might be years away, in this paper we will discuss an energy efficient method to transport either a small asteroid or materials gathered from asteroids to the Earth. In particular, I will concentrate on a large and nearby asteroid, 8 Flora in the Flora Family. Generally, asteroids are located between 2 to 3 AU (astronomical unit) from the Earth, and in transporting materials from asteroids to the Earth, an energy equivalent of the gravitational potential energy difference between the Earth and the asteroids to the Sun. This amount of potential energy is a sizable fraction of the orbital kinetic energy of the Earth around the Sun. This amount of energy is considerable. In this paper I propose to use the planet Mars as a medium to remove much of the gravitational energy difference. In the case of the asteroid 8 Flora, it is only necessary to decelerate the asteroid mate- rials by a small decrement, of the order of 3 km/sec. This decrement could even be achieved (pending on the availability of technology) by mechanical devices such as catapults on 8 Flora. It is also proposed to separate a pair of contact asteroid binaries by using impulse propulsion, and to propel one component of the separated asteroids to pass by Mars to be decelerated to reach the Earth orbit and captured by the Earth or the Moon. The plausibility of this ambitious project will be discussed. The author is NASA-GSFC Astrophysicist, Retired.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #223
- Pub Date:
- January 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014AAS...22324704C