1
UPFRONT 4 | NewScientist | 13 April 2013 NASA astronauts are supposed to visit an asteroid by the mid- 2020s, but what if the technology to take them there isn’t ready in time? No problem – just drag the rock into orbit around the moon. In January, the Keck Institute for Space Studies in Pasadena, California, reported that NASA was mulling just such a plan in order to meet President Obama’s goal of sending humans to an asteroid. As New Scientist went to press, it appeared that imminent US federal budget proposals for 2014 would include $105 million to fund it. According to Keck, NASA would use an ion-propelled rocket to lasso a resource-rich asteroid about 7 metres wide and tow it into lunar orbit. Astronauts would then visit – via NASA’s planned space launch system and Orion spacecraft – to mine the object and practise techniques for landing on, and deflecting, asteroids. “An asteroid in the Earth-moon system would provide a safer destination to begin developing our capability for human deep space exploration,” says Chris Lewicki of Planetary Resources, a space-mining firm in Seattle. Seize that asteroid! Republican climate IS THE US Republican Party alienating its supporters by questioning climate change? Just 35 per cent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents support the party’s stance on the issue, according to a new poll. “We were quite surprised by the low level of support,” says Ed Maibach of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, a member of the polling team. During the 2012 Republican presidential primaries, candidates North Korea ups the stakes BAN KI-MOON has urged calm, while Pyongyang has warned South Koreans to evacuate in case of nuclear war. As New Scientist went to press, North Korea was scaling up its rhetoric, with some reports suggesting that a ballistic missile test might be imminent. But what can North Korea’s missiles hit? And can they be prevented from hitting their targets? Any test is likely to involve the Musudan missile, which is based on a Soviet design and has a theoretical range of 2500 to 4000 kilometres. Fired from North Korea’s east coast, such a missile would fly high over Japan and out into the Pacific Ocean. The US Pacific territory of Guam would be just within its reach. If tests are successful, the Musudan will be a significant advance over North Korea’s workhorse ballistic missile, the No-dong, which can travel up to 1300 kilometres. But even the No-dong could strike cities in South Korea and Japan, and some security analysts believe that North Korea has the capability to fit one with a nuclear weapon. US officials seem confident that the Aegis antimissile system can shoot the No-dong down. Deployed on both US and Japanese ships, it sends an interceptor to destroy an incoming missile while it is still high in the atmosphere. According to the US Missile Defense Agency, in tests the Aegis has eliminated a target missile in 24 of 30 attempts. In 2008, it successfully destroyed a failed US spy satellite that was slowly falling back to Earth and posed a small risk of falling on inhabited Pacific islands. “An asteroid in the Earth- moon system provides a safer way to develop our deep space capability” REUTERS/KCNA But shooting down a known target under controlled conditions is quite different from responding to a surprise attack, says George Lewis of the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Sophisticated countermeasures such as decoy warheads could foil an interceptor, but Pyongyang probably will not deploy them, says Ted Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But North Korean engineers could easily modify a missile so that it breaks up in flight, he says, with the warhead intact and still on course. Tests on Aegis so far do not make clear whether it could identify and target the warhead among the multiple objects falling back to Earth . “There are so many unknowns,” Postol says.
