NASA is currently developing the Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission (ARRM) that would have the capability to retrieve a boulder from a Near Earth Asteroid and place it in Lunar orbit where astronauts in an Orion spacecraft would rendezvous with the ARRM vehicle and explore the boulder. This mission is conceived as a capabilities demonstration mission that would path-find high power Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) and Earth-independent human spaceflight operations for Mars missions in the 2030s, as part of NASA's Journey to Mars initiative. The high-power, light-weight solar arrays and high-power, magnetically-shielded hall thrusters being developed for ARRM will dramatically increase NASA's in-space transportation capability. These two technologies could propel affordable human missions to asteroids, Martian moons, and asteroids. In addition, these technologies could be used to enhance human access to cis-lunar space and the Lunar surface. This paper will provide an overview of ARRM and discuss how ARRM-developed technologies would feed forward to human deep space exploration missions.
High power solar electric propulsion and the Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission (ARRM)
01.03.2017
2603339 byte
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch