SETI Live - Sailing toward a Near-Earth Asteroid: NEA Scout

Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, or NEA Scout, is a miniature spacecraft, known as a CubeSat, developed under NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems Program. NASA selected NEA Scout as a secondary payload on Artemis I -- the first integrated, uncrewed flight test of the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft. The NEA Scout will serve as a robotic reconnaissance mission to fly by and return data from an asteroid representative of near-Earth asteroids that may one day be human destinations.

Catching a ride on Artemis I, NEA Scout will deploy from the Space Launch System after the Orion spacecraft is separated from the upper stage. Once it reaches the lunar vicinity, it will perform imaging for instrument calibration. While cold gas thrusters will provide the initial propulsive maneuvers to place the spacecraft on the right trajectory, NEA Scout's hallmark solar sail will enable extended propulsion and efficient transit to 2020GE, the targeted asteroid during its approximate two-year cruise.

The target is 2020 GE, a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) that is less than 60 feet (18 meters) in size. Asteroids smaller than 330 feet (100 meters) across have never been explored up close before. The spacecraft will use its science camera to get a closer look, measuring the object’s size, shape, rotation, and surface properties while looking for any dust and debris that might surround 2020 GE.

To discuss this mission and its scientific and technological objectives, SETI Institute Senior astronomer Franck Marchis invited JPL planetary scientist Julie Castillo-Rogez, the mission’s principal science investigator. Image (the one with the sail and the asteroid?

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