SpaceDev the world's first commercial space exploration company, today announced that Tony Spear, Mars Pathfinder project manager, and a team of seven experts have been commissioned to design an alternative mission and spacecraft for
SpaceDev's Near Earth Asteroid Prospector (NEAP).
Tony Spear was responsible for the highly successful and popular Mars
Pathfinder mission which last summer put the lander and Sojourner rover on
Mars to analyze the soil, rocks and atmosphere.
The Mars Pathfinder was the least expensive mission of its kinds and a
bold departure from the traditional size and expense of such missions. Mr.
Spear's job for SpaceDev is to use the same out of the box thinking to
design an optimal mission and a minimum cost spacecraft for NEAP. Study
results are expected in early July 1998.
James Benson, President and CEO of SpaceDev said "I am excited about Tony
and his dream team analyzing the feasibility of re-targeting NEAP to a new
and better target, asteroid Nereus. This is a wonderful and important
possibility because Nereus will fly by quite close to earth just before
the rendezvous opportunity, only .029 AU away. If we go to Nereus, a type
C asteroid, it will be the first time that close-up ground based
instrument findings can be correlated with instruments flown to and
dropped onto an asteroid."
NEAP will be the world's first commercial deep space science mission, and
will fly instruments from science teams, which have purchased insured
rides on the unmanned NEAP spacecraft.
In early 2002, Nereus will fly by very close to Earth, less than three
million miles away, only ten times the distance to the moon. A few months
later will be the best time to rendezvous with Nereus. No other probe has
ever rendezvoused with a carbonaceous asteroid.
Benson added "It is of the utmost importance that we go to near earth
asteroids to examine and understand them. They are both incredibly
dangerous and incredibly valuable, but at this time no one has a clue how
to deal with them. SpaceDev is the first to do something practical about
asteroids."
Carbonaceous asteroids are believed to contain water, iron, carbon,
aluminum, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and a variety of other
potentially valuable resources. Iron content varies from 6 to 23 percent,
and some are believed to contain up to 20 percent water. NEAP will look
for water with its neutron spectrometer, similar to that on Alan Binder's
Lunar Prospector, which confirmed the presence of water on the moon. Dr.
Binder is on the board of directors for SpaceDev. Nereus, about .6 miles
in diameter, is estimated to contain resources with a street value of over
$1 trillion.
NEAP is recognized by NASA as a "Mission of Opportunity" for both the
Discovery and MIDEX programs. To date, seven teams of scientists have
notified NASA of their intent to seek funding from NASA to purchase rides
for their instruments on the NEAP mission.
SpaceDev intends to hold a press conference in Washington, DC in early
July to release and describe the results of the Spear NEAP mission study.
About SpaceDev
SpaceDev, the world's first commercial space exploration company, intends
to launch the first privately financed spacecraft to assess and to land on
a near earth asteroid. SpaceDev is selling rides for scientific
instruments to governments and companies to transport their instruments
and experiments through deep space to another planetary body. SpaceDev
intends to sell the scientific data acquired by its instruments as
commercial products. Colorado-based SpaceDev has offices in San Diego, CA
and Washington, D.C.
