Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the - Solar System ...

FIGURE 4.4 The current best map and images of Pluto based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope.
This will be the best view possible until the arrival of the New Horizons mission in 2015. NOTE: This
figure was part of a NASA-sponsored press release in March 2010. It is based on results published in
Astronomical Journal 139:1128-1143, 2010, and Astronomical Journal 139:1117-1127, 2010. SOURCE:
NASA, ESA, and M. Buie (Southwest Research Institute).
Missions of Interest to NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate
Although NASA’s plans for human exploration activities beyond low Earth orbit are in flux, there
is considerable interest in missions to near-Earth objects. Thus, precursor robotic missions to small
bodies can accommodated both human exploration and science goals. Potentially significant areas of
overlapping interest between SMD and ESMD include the following:
• Identification of hazards requires an understanding of the geophysical behavior of NEOs, a
science goal;
• Development of technologies, especially advanced power systems, for human-precursor
missions are similar to those required for science missions; and
• Resource identification encompassing scientific compositional measurements.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter provides a recent demonstration of synergy between the
interests of NASA’s SMD and ESMD. Proximity operations around small bodies may allow some
science observations, and eventual human landings on small bodies would presumably involve sample
returns. Such interaction might include a spectrum of opportunities, including providing inputs into
mission design, furnishing flight instruments, characterizing objects through data analysis, and sharing
newly developed technologies.
Because of their proximity, NEOs are obvious targets for low-cost scientific reconnaissance,
rendezvous, and sample return. Notional ESMD plans include several missions to NEOs. Many of these
objects, in diameter ranges of ~100 meters to a few tens of kilometers, have been well characterized by
ground-based astronomy. Those that come very close to Earth (the so-called Potentially Hazardous
Asteroids) have occasionally been extremely well characterized by optical instruments and by radar
observations from Goldstone and Arecibo, and are of great societal interest on account of their potential
PREPUBLICATION COPY—SUBJECT TO FURTHER EDITORIAL CORRECTION
4-20