Asteroids and the Exploration of the Solar System on Asteroid Day LIVE 2021

Asteroids are much more than left-over remnants of planetary formation, they could be the keys to the future economy. A 2017 report by the US Geological Survey concluded “it is clear that the water and metal resources in near-Earth asteroids are sufficient to support humanity should it become a fully space-faring species.” This extraordinary assessment indicates that asteroids are only going to become more important to humanity.
In this final segment, we will look to the future of asteroid exploration from both a scientific and a commercial point of view.
We will be hearing from key people involved in NASA’s LUCY and Psyche missions. Psyche will investigate a tantalising metal asteroid that may once have been the core of a young planet, and Lucy will travel to Jupiter to survey a previously unvisited population of asteroids that have been trapped for billions of years by the giant planet’s orbit.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, will give us a fascinating glimpse at the mission they are developing with Europe called the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX). This will place a rover on Mars’ largest moon Phobos, which could be a captured asteroid.
The panel for this section opens up the world of space resources and the development of technologies that will allow us to develop an “in-space” economy. Representatives from the Luxembourg Space Agency, SES, ESA and the XPRIZE foundation explain how space is gradually changing from a realm of purely scientific exploration to one of economic utilisation as well. In so doing, they paint a fascinating picture of the future.
In addition, we will learn about the work of the Near Earth Object Modelling and Payloads for Protection (NEO-MAPP) group. Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, the group is dedicated to advanced research of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and the development of new payload technologies that could be used for scientific characterisation and planetary defence.
We will also step inside the University of Luxembourg SnT’s LunarLab. This fascinating place simulates a lunar landscape so that robotic missions can be practised in a realistic setting.
Finally, we will close the circle with this year’s celebration of the 25th launch anniversary of NASA’s NEAR-Shoemaker mission, the world’s first dedicated asteroid mission. Throughout the broadcast, we will have talked to Andrew Cheng from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory who was the NEAR-Shoemaker project scientist. He is also the co-lead of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), and in this section he will compare the technologies used on the two missions, and reveal the one question about asteroids that keeps him awake at night.
No matter how we look at it, asteroids are going to play a big role in our future exploration of space.
This video is part of 2021 Asteroid Day LIVE Digital from Luxembourg. Visit our RUclips channel to watch the full five hour broadcast.
Follow us!
Facebook: AsteroidDay
RUclips: / asteroidday
Instagram: / asteroidday
Twitch: / asteroidday
---
Visit our website: asteroidday.org/
Subscribe to our newsletters: bit.ly/3hbgzb1
Asteroid Day is held on 30 June each year to mark the date of the Tunguska, Siberia event. Asteroid Day was co-founded by astrophysicist and famed musician Dr Brian May of the rock group Queen; Apollo 9 Astronaut Rusty Schweickart; Filmmaker Grig Richters; and B612 Foundation President Danica Remy, to educate the public about the importance of asteroids in our history, and the role they play in the solar system. In 2016, prompted by the leadership of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), the United Nations declared Asteroid Day to be a global day of education to raise awareness and promote knowledge in the general public about asteroids. Thousands of independently organised events have taken place around the globe, encompassing 125 of the world’s 195 countries.

[@PipinhoSnow]

;)