NASA’s final shuttle left the international space station for its return flight Tuesday. But while that program winds down, a Tennessee scientist is helping the agency launch into research on something deeper in space: asteroids.
University of Tennessee Assistant Professor Joshua Emery says human space exploration is not over. Funded by NASA grant money, he and a team of international scientists have started research on an asteroid that is so far away right now they can barely see it through high-powered telescopes. But in 2016, they hope to send a robot there to collect surface samples.
Emery says although the device will be automated, the mission opens up potential for a human component.
“It does it all on its own. There are no humans on the spacecraft at all, but there is a lot of discussion within NASA for the next target for human exploration being asteroids,” he said.
Scientists hope the samples will tell us more about what asteroids are made of, how the Earth was formed, and even how life began. The team will use telescopes to monitor the dark sphere of rock, which could collide with Earth within the next two centuries.
He says Tennessee scientists have contributed to national space research for awhile, but now they’re ramping up.
“We’ve been expanding our planetary research here at UT and so from that perspective our involvement in these NASA robotic missions has expanded by a large factor in the past decade, by a factor of three or five or something. So it really is an area that’s up and coming in Tennessee,” he said.
UT’s Space Institute houses a meteorite-tracking camera, part of NASA’s All-Sky Fireball Network. The Arnold Engineering Center in Tullahoma has tested the engines on every space shuttle, and Space Institute graduates have gone on to become NASA astronauts. Barry Wilmore of Mount Juliet, who piloted a shuttle flight in 2009, was Head of Communications for the Atlantis launch this month. The asteroid mission is expected to cost about $800 million.
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