Rachel Kraft
Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1100
rachel.h.kraft@nasa.gov

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MEDIA ADVISORY M13-132
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NASA Releases New Imagery of Asteroid Mission
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NASA released Thursday new photos and video animations depicting the agency's
planned mission to find, capture, redirect, and study a near-Earth asteroid.
The images depict crew operations including the Orion spacecraft's trip to
and rendezvous with the relocated asteroid, as well as astronauts maneuvering
through a spacewalk to collect samples from the asteroid.

Part of President Obama's FY 2014 budget request for NASA, the asteroid
initiative capitalizes on activities across the agency's human exploration,
space technology and science programs. NASA is enhancing its ongoing efforts
to identify and characterize near-Earth objects for scientific investigation,
and to find potentially hazardous asteroids and targets appropriate for
capture and exploration.

The agency is creating an asteroid mission baseline concept to develop
further in 2014 to help engineers establish more details about the mission.
Meanwhile, engineers and scientists across the agency continue to evaluate
several alternatives, as well as ideas from the public, for consideration
throughout mission planning.

The asteroid initiative will incorporate advanced solar electric propulsion
technology as a power source for spacecraft, offering greater flexibility to
the spacecraft and mission planners. The mission also leverages the agency's
progress on the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft and other
cutting-edge technology developments.

In late July, NASA conducted its asteroid mission formulation review, which
brought together agency leaders from across the country to examine internal
studies proposing multiple concepts and alternatives for each phase of the
mission, and assessed technical and programmatic aspects of the mission.
Currently, NASA is assessing the more than 400 responses received to a
request for information in which industry, universities and the public
offered ideas for the initiative.

The agency will host a technical workshop at the Lunar and Planetary
Institute in Houston from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 to discuss those responses and
the potential for ideas from them to be incorporated into the mission
concept. Virtual participation will be available to the public. Participation
details will be provided prior to the event.

The NASA animation can be viewed at:

http://go.nasa.gov/12tf23l

The full image gallery can be viewed at:

http://go.nasa.gov/19A67iI

For more information on NASA's asteroid initiative, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative