Will NASA's Asteroid Mission Go Ahead?

Yesterday webrought you newsof the President ’s Budget Request for NASA in 2017 . There were few surprises , with continued brawl over the Space Launch System ( SLS ) rocket and the upcoming Europa mission . But something has happen on the back of the promulgation .

In a conference call with reporter yesterday , David Radzanowski , NASA ’s chief financial officer , let on that NASA ’s planned mission to send humans to an asteroid might be retard – and rather importantly , at that .

According to Eric Berger atArs Technica , Radzanowski let slip that the engagement for the initial robotic spacecraft required for this mission had slipped from 2020 to as belated as 2023 . “ Do n’t get fixated that there ’s a delay at this point in meter , ” he suppose .

Why is this pregnant ? Well , for those unaware , NASA’sAsteroid Redirect Mission(ARM ) was the “ stepping Harlan F. Stone ” mission devised by Obama ’s administration before man Mars missions get , to replace President Bush ’s mandate that NASA should return to the Moon first . This would call for using a robotic spacecraft to move an asteroid into orbit around the Moon , before a manned Orion spacecraft visited the asteroid , testing primal technique and technology ahead of the Mars mission .

But that all relied on the machinelike mission launching in 2020 , rendezvousing with the asteroid in 2022 and moving a chunk by 2025 , around the same sentence the manned crew would visit . A 3 - year postponement pushes this back to as late as 2028 . Would there be belt - on personal effects for grow to Mars in the 2030s ?

The signification of this , says Berger , is that it shows a deficiency of assurance in the mission , specially as it was allocated just $ 66.7 million of the $ 19 billion total in the budget petition . “ Nobody believes in the ARM missionary work , ” he quote an unnamed former aged NASA official as saying . “ When the honcho says go make this happen , you have to stick out . That ’s part of the deal . But deep in their hearts , is anybody really sold on ARM ? I do n’t remember so . ”

Whether things can stay on cart track remain to be seen . It does highlight , though , that whilegood progresscontinues to be made with Orion and SLS , the deficiency of a unmortgaged operable timeline for the vehicles remains apparent .