[meteorite-list] NASA Announces Media Opportunities for Asteroid Forum

[Ron Baalke]

March 25, 2014
     
NASA Announces Media Opportunities for Asteroid Forum

Media are invited to attend the agency's Asteroid Initiative Opportunities  
Forum on Wednesday, March 26, at NASA Headquarters in Washington or  
participate virtually. NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot will be  
available to speak with media in-person following the 12:30-4:30 p.m. EDT  
event.

The forum, which is open to industry, academia and interested individuals,  
will provide status updates from ongoing asteroid redirect mission studies  
and summarize how responses to a 2013 Request for Information (RFI) are  
helping improve mission planning activities. The event will also highlight  
opportunities for public engagement in the mission and activities associated  
with the Asteroid Grand Challenge.

Seating is limited. Media who wish to attend the forum must contact Sarah  
Ramsey no later than 9 a.m. Wednesday at sarah.ramsey at nasa.gov or  
202-358-1694.

The forum will be carried on NASA Television and streamed online for virtual  
participants. Virtual participants may ask questions throughout the event on  
Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA. For more information on how to view the  
event, go to:

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidforum 

NASA's Asteroid Initiative includes two separate, but related activities:  
the Asteroid Redirect Mission and the Asteroid Grand Challenge. NASA  
currently is developing concepts for the mission, which will employ a robotic  
spacecraft to capture a small near-Earth asteroid, or remove a boulder from  
the surface of a larger asteroid, and redirect it into a stable orbit around  
the moon. Astronauts will travel aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft, launched on  
the Space Launch System rocket, to rendezvous in lunar orbit with the  
captured asteroid material. Once there, they will collect samples to return  
to Earth for study. New capabilities and systems tested through the Asteroid  
Initiative will advance NASA's ultimate goal of sending humans to Mars.

The grand challenge is seeking the best ideas to find all asteroid threats to  
human populations, and to accelerate the work that NASA is already doing for  
planetary defense.

The forum follows a Broad Agency Announcement issued March 21, which solicits  
ideas for alternate capture system concepts, rendezvous sensor systems,  
secondary payloads, feasibility studies on adapting commercial spacecraft  
buses for the mission and commercial and international partnership  
opportunities for the mission. For more information about the announcement,  
visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/1iVytcG 

More than 400 responses were submitted in response to the 2013 asteroid  
initiative RFI, 96 of which were explored in depth at a two-part workshop in  
Houston in late 2013. NASA recently released a full report on the workshop  
activities and recommendations, which can be viewed at:

http://go.nasa.gov/Lgn9eq 

For more information about upcoming events and NASA's Asteroid Initiative,  
visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative 

-end-

Sarah Ramsey / Trent J. Perrotto
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1694 / 202-358-1100
sarah.ramsey at nasa.gov / trent.j.perrotto at nasa.gov