Asteroid proposal may get burned

CAPE CANAVERAL — NASA promoted its plan for a proposed human expedition to an asteroid Tuesday as congressional lawmakers aimed to kill the project in its infancy.

Outlined in the Obama Administration’s proposed 2014 budget, the mission would involve capturing an asteroid with a robotic spacecraft, hauling it back to a lunar orbit, and then sending astronauts on a sample return mission.

But today, a House subcommittee that draws up NASA’s budget will review a draft authorization bill that reportedly prohibits the asteroid mission and instead steers NASA back to the moon.

NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said the early House version of the agency’s 2013 spending plan, which projects budgets for a five-year period, is a letdown.

“It was certainly a disappointment to have — as we’ve seen in the draft authorization bill from the House leadership — a lack of a recognition yet, I will say, of the importance and value of this mission,” Garver said at an industry briefing on the asteroid initiative.

NASA and White House officials say the initiative would:

• Help identify asteroids that threaten Earth and develop means to protect the planet from them.

• Shed light on the formation of the solar system.

• Drive development of technologies required for human expeditions to Mars. NASA’s Astronaut Office also would gain operational experience for deep space exploration.

Garver seemed confident that NASA would win over opponents on the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics.

“This is the beginning of the debate,” she said. “I think that we really, truly are going to be able to show the value of this mission.”

The industry trade publication SpaceNews this month reported that the draft authorization bill would nix NASA’s plans for starting up the asteroid initiative, which was sanctioned by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

NASA in 2014 is requesting $105 million to start up the project. Twenty percent of the money would go toward doubling current efforts to identify near-Earth asteroids. NASA has not yet estimated the full cost of an asteroid retrieval mission.

Florida Today