Space 'Harpoons' Could Snatch Samples of Asteroids and Moons

Artist's concept of a tethered "penetrator" heading toward a celestial body to take a sample. 

Credit: Chad Truitt, University of Washington

Why bother landing softly on an alien world to collect samples if you can just snag material with a harpoon from afar?

Using a set of long-lined, hard-hitting harpoons would allow a mission to grab large samples from multiple locations on an asteroid or moon — and to get them from beneath the surface, where some of the most interesting material lies, say researchers developing the idea.

Robert Winglee

"This technology will be able for the first time to pull samples of the order of a few kilograms from depths of a few meters, which could greatly enhance our knowledge of solar system objects and the resources therein," Robert Winglee of the University of Washington and his colleagues wrote in a NASA report detailing their project.

"Moreover, it offers the opportunity to take multiple samples (from either multiple objects or from multiple areas of a few objects) at little extra cost so that it will provide much greater flexibility and greatly enhance the science return for any given mission," they added.


The team's concept currently calls for a sample-return spacecraft to carry six lightweight, rocket-shaped "penetrators," which would be swung down at the target object(s) from orbit or during a flyby using a miles-long space tether.

The penetrators would hit at high speed — up to 2,240 mph (3,605 km/h, or 1 km/sec) or so — and go deep beneath the surface.

During the impact, they would collect several kilograms of material, which would be reeled back to the parent probe by the tether for eventual return to Earth.

The six-shooter approach enables the collection of multiple samples — an enticing prospect for scientists, Winglee said.

Russian Plans Launch of Lunar Probe, Luna-Glob

An artist's illustration of Russia's Luna-Glob spacecraft. 

CREDIT: NASA

Russia will launch an unmanned spacecraft to the moon in 2015, the first step in a new push toward establishing a fully robotic lunar station, according to press reports.

The new moon orbiter, called Luna-Glob, should be ready for launch in two years and is expected to be the first of four missions to establish a lunar base, Russia’s RIA Novosti reported today (Jan. 15).

The spacecraft will carry scientific instruments used for measuring dust and cosmic rays as well as tools that will be used for astrophysics experiments as part of the unmanned mission to the moon. Eventually, the probe should traffic samples of lunar dust and rock back to Earth.

Russia's goal to set up this lunar station dates back to the late 1990's, and was originally marked for completion last year.

However, due to a few budgetary setbacks, the Russian Federal Space Program had to postpone the launch, but it appears to be back on track.

The space agency is also planning on developing better strategies for manned moon exploration. The Federal Space Program recently received 10 million rubles (US $330,000) to create a new rocket that could launch their cosmonauts to the moon.

That project is set for completion at the end of May of this year.

Water, Footprints or Life on Mars? NASA Says; Maybe not!

NASA downplayed Wednesday talk of a major discovery by its Martian rover after remarks by the mission chief raised hopes it may have unearthed evidence life once existed on the Red Planet.

Excitement is building over soon-to-be-released results from NASA's Curiosity rover, which is three months into a two-year mission to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life.

Its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments have been sending back information as it hunts for compounds such as methane, as well as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, that would mean life could once have existed there.

In an interview aired Tuesday, lead mission investigator John Grotzinger hinted at something major but said there would be no announcement for several weeks.

"We're getting data from SAM," he said. "This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good."

A spokesman for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managing the project, appeared to pour cold water Wednesday on the hopes of space enthusiasts looking forward to an earth-shattering discovery.

"John was delighted about the quality and range of information coming in from SAM during the day a reporter happened to be sitting in John's office last week. He has been similarly delighted by results at other points during the mission so far," spokesman Guy Webster reported.

"The scientists want to gain confidence in the findings before taking them outside of the science team. As for history books, the whole mission is for the history books," Webster said.

Scientists do not expect Curiosity to find aliens or living creatures but they hope to use it to analyze soil and rocks for signs the building blocks of life are present and may have supported life in the past.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover, which landed in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, also aims to study the Martian environment to prepare for a possible human mission there in the coming years.

US President Barack Obama has vowed to send humans to the planet by 2030.

How many Apollo Goodwill Moon Rocks are missing?

Genesis Rock: Missing presumed Lost

The Apollo program, for all its inspirational accomplishments and technical achievements, was a servant of two masters.

The first was a pure scientific enterprise, to learn as much as possible about Earth’s only natural satellite and to push the boundaries of human spaceflight.

The second was political, with Apollo acting as the most compelling symbol of American technical prowess, industry, courage, and will.

This dichotomy is embodied by the Goodwill Moon Rocks program.

A case can be made that no field of study benefitted more from Apollo than the science of geology. Of the approximately 430 kilograms of known lunar materials on Earth, Apollo astronauts obtained roughly 382 kg.

The vast majority of those samples have been used to further our understanding of planetary formation, geochemistry, and the physical history of our solar system.

However, not all of those moon rocks were recovered in the name of science.

Specific lunar samples from Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 were earmarked as political souvenirs.

Precisely 270 prepared lunar rock samples were distributed as part of the Goodwill Moon Rocks program, most of them going to the 50 U.S. states and a number of foreign countries as tokens of appreciation for support of Apollo, NASA, and U.S. interests.

The recipients were charged with keeping custody of perhaps the rarest and most valuable artifacts ever distributed for diplomatic purposes.

Four decades later, no one can account for a significant number of those 270 valuable, and nigh-irreplaceable moon rocks.

JAXA Hayabusa reveals source of Earth asteroids

The longstanding mystery of where most meteorites striking our planet come from has now been solved by the first asteroid samples that a spacecraft has ever returned to Earth.

This discovery is just one of many unearthed with the aid of the Japanese asteroid probe Hayabusa.

Another is that asteroids may be shrinking away to nothing, researchers said.

Hayabusa faced many perils on its seven-year mission, including fuel leaks, engine trouble and the loss of the lander intended to gather space rock samples.

Nevertheless, the unmanned mission succeeded when a capsule containing more than 1,500 grains of asteroid dust parachuted into the Australian outback in June 2010. [Photos: Japan's Mission to Asteroid Itokawa]

NASA MARS MAHLI Camera Image: Grains of Sand

This view of grains from a sand dune near Christmas Lake, Ore., was taken by a test version of the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on Curiosity, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, which is slated to launch in fall 2011.

The image includes three manufactured spheres; each is a 2-millimeter-diameter (0.08-inch-diameter) ball bearing, placed to provide an independent measure of the image scale. Reflected in each sphere is the glow from the camera's four white LEDs (light-emitting diodes).

This image has a resolution of 15.4 microns per pixel, which is about twice as high as the camera resolution on Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. The view covers an area about 1 inch, or 2.5 centimeters, across.

Geologists can examine an image like this for information about the composition of the sand. In this case, the largest white grains are pumice fragments and the dark black and gray grains are fragments of basalt.

Nearly transparent, slightly yellow crystals are feldspars. The crystals and pumice were erupted by Mount Mazama in its terminal explosion about 7,700 years ago; the volcano is known today as Crater Lake.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

Caution Mars samples: Bio-Hazard?

If NASA aims to bring Mars samples back to Earth, it should prepare for the possibility that the samples could include organisms that might endanger humans and other terrestrial life, a new report by the US National Research Council says. To prevent potential contamination by any Martian life, the report argues that early in the mission, NASA should begin building a secure facility on Earth to house the samples.

Within the next two decades, NASA hopes to launch a mission to Mars that could return the first pristine samples of Martian atmosphere, rocks and soil. These samples could be used to perform tests that may be impossible with lightweight robotic explorers, such as definitively measuring rock ages and, potentially, finding the first evidence of Martian life.

But the hazards such life might pose to terrestrial life are unknown. If self-replicating organisms are brought back to Earth, there could be a slim but non-zero chance that they could infect Earth organisms or compete with them in a way that could affect Earth's ecosystems.

"Given that this is a very high-stakes game where we're talking about a potentially global problem, we have to be inherently conservative," says Jack Farmer of Arizona State University in Tempe, who chaired the committee of 10 experts behind the report, which was commissioned by NASA.