NASA’s New Spacecraft: NEA Scout

• 20 Jul 2021

Why in News

Recently, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced that its new spacecraft, named Near-Earth Asteroid Scout or NEA Scout, has completed all required tests and has been safely tucked inside the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

Key Points

• About NEA Scout:
  
  • Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, or NEA Scout, is a miniaturized spacecraft, known as a CubeSat, developed under NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Program.
    
    • AES pioneers new approaches for rapidly developing prototype systems, demonstrating key capabilities, and validating operational concepts for future human missions beyond low-Earth orbit.
  • Its main mission is to fly by and collect data from a near-Earth asteroid.
    
    • It will take about two years to cruise to the asteroid and will be about 93 million miles away from Earth during the asteroid encounter.
  • It will also be America’s first interplanetary mission using a special solar sail propulsion.
    
    • So far, spacecraft have been using solar energy to power them and execute critical functions.
    • This will be the first time that a spacecraft uses it as wind to generate thrust and move forward.
  • It is one of several payloads that will hitch a ride on Artemis I, which is expected to be launched in November, 2021.
    
    • Artemis I will be an uncrewed testflight of the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket.
    • It is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration to the Moon and Mars.
  • NEA Scout launches to the Moon in 2021 with a fleet of other small satellites aboard Artemis 1.
    
    • At the Moon, NEA Scout will deploy its 86-square-meter solar sail and slowly spiral out of lunar orbit.
    • It will travel to a near-Earth asteroid and perform a slow fly-by, capturing up-close images of the surface.
• Significance:
  
  • The images gathered by NEA Scout will provide critical information on the asteroid’s physical properties such as orbit, shape, volume, rotation, the dust and debris field surrounding it, plus its surface properties.
  • The spacecraft will pave the way for the Solar Cruiser, which will use a sail 16 times larger when it flies in 2025.
  • Studying Near-Earth asteroids can help in developing strategies for reducing the potential damage caused in the event of an impact.
  • Data can be used to determine what is required to reduce risk, increase effectiveness, and improve the design and operations of robotic and human space exploration.
• Near-Earth Objects (NEOs):
  
  • NEOs are comets and asteroids pushed by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits which allow them to enter the Earth’s neighbourhood.
  • These objects are composed mostly of water ice with embedded dust particles.
  • NEOs occasionally approach close to the Earth as they orbit the Sun.
  • NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Study (CNEOS) determines the time and distances of these objects, when their approach to the Earth is close, through the Asteroid Watch Widget.

Asteroids

• These are rocky objects that orbit the Sun, much smaller than planets. They are also called minor planets.
• According to NASA, 9,94,383 is the count of known asteroids, the remnants from the formation of the solar system over 4.6 billion years ago.
• Asteroids are divided into three classes:
  
  • First, those found in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which is estimated to contain somewhere between 1.1-1.9 million asteroids.
  • The second group is that of trojans, which are asteroids that share an orbit with a larger planet.
  • The third classification is Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA), which have orbits that pass close to the Earth. Those that cross the Earth’s orbit are called Earth-crossers.
    
    • More than 10,000 such asteroids are known, out of which over 1,400 are classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs).
    • PHAs are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth.
    • Specifically, all asteroids with an Earth Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance (MOID) of 0.05 au or less and an absolute magnitude (H) of 22.0 or less are considered PHAs.

Source: IE