MIT
researchers have devised a tether to help astronauts walk across asteroids on
future missions. The tether system would wrap all the way around the
asteroid. This really adds a new dimension to the term "asteroid
belt."
The MIT researchers,
Christopher Carr and Ian Garrick-Bethell, anticipate that astronauts will find it
difficult to work on the surface of an asteroid, due to the extremely low
gravity. An asteroid one kilometer in diameter would have a surface gravity
just 1/28000th that of the Earth; an astronaut could literally jump right off
the asteroid and not come back down.
Once tethered, however,
astronauts could walk across the surface in a more normal manner, and perform
physical chores like digging a small hole or pulling objects from the surface
more easily (see diagram).
The idea of wrapping a
tether all the way around an asteroid may seem like an extreme solution. However,
the loose composition of asteroids could make other strategies, like drilling
or attaching a permanent "bolt" or other hardware to the surface,
impossible to implement.
There has been an increase
in interest in asteroid science and exploration in the last few years; the Dawn
mission is trying to fly to Vesta and Ceres, the largest rocks in the solar
system. NASA is also studying a manned
mission to a Near Earth Object and even the possibility of using
an asteroid as a radiation shield. Serious scientists have even proposed moving
asteroids that will come too close to Earth. A circumferential tether could
come in handy in the near future.
Carr and Garrick-Bethell are
publishing their work in an upcoming issue of the journal Acta Astronautica.
Via MIT;
find out more about asteroids.
(This Science Fiction in
the News story used with permission of Technovelgy.com
- where science meets fiction)
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