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Published October 2017 | Published
Conference Paper Open

Legacy of the Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission (ARRM)

Abstract

NASA's proposed Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission (ARRM) began with the recognition in a 2010 NASA study that emerging high-power solar electric propulsion technology could be used to rendezvous with, capture, and return an entire, very small (~10,000 kg), near Earth asteroid to the International Space Station. A 2011 workshop by the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) extended this NASA study to asteroid masses of order 500,000 kg by returning them to cislunar space. Subsequent detailed NASA studies in 2013-2014 confirmed the feasibility of this concept. This led to the establishment of the Asteroid Redirect Mission program that consisted of a robotic mission to return multiple tons of asteroid material to cislunar space and a crewed mission to rendezvous with the robotic vehicle, perform two extra vehicular activities (EVAs), collect samples of the asteroid material, and return this material to Earth. Implementation of ARRM proceeded midway through Phase B before being cancelled in April 2017. Although ARRM was cancelled, it left a near-term legacy of positive impacts to the human spaceflight community, the planetary defense community, the deep space science community, and asteroid mining interests.

Additional Information

© 2017. California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged. The research described in this paper was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I would like to Louis Friedman and Thomas D. Jones for their instrumental work in selling the ARM concept to NASA. I would also like to thank all of the original members of the KISS study for the courage and technical expertise they displayed in constructing mission concept whose feasibility withstood the scrutiny of detailed NASA studies. Finally, I would like to thank all of the men and women throughout JPL and NASA who spent years working on ARM and who, I'm sure, would have made ARM a brilliant success if it had gone to completion.

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Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 18, 2023