Exploring Comets and Asteroids in the 21st Century
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Exploring 21st century studies comets asteroids↗
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Organic Contamination Baseline Study in NASA Johnson Space Center Astromaterials Curation Laboratories
Future robotic and human spaceflight missions to the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and comets will require curating astromaterial samples with minimal inorganic and organic contamination to preserve the scientific integrity of each sample. 21st century sample return missions will focus on strict protocols for reducing organic contamination that have not been seen since the Apollo manned lunar landing program. To properly curate these materials, the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office under the Astromaterial Research and Exploration Science Directorate at NASA Johnson Space Center houses and protects all extraterrestrial materials brought back to Earth that are controlled by the United States government. During fiscal year 2012, we conducted a year-long project to compile historical documentation and laboratory tests involving organic investigations at these facilities. In addition, we developed a plan to determine the current state of organic cleanliness in curation laboratories housing astromaterials. This was accomplished by focusing on current procedures and protocols for cleaning, sample handling, and storage. While the intention of this report is to give a comprehensive overview of the current state of organic cleanliness in JSC curation laboratories, it also provides a baseline for determining whether our cleaning procedures and sample handling protocols need to be adapted and/or augmented to meet the new requirements for future human spaceflight and robotic sample return missions.
Calaway, Michael J.↗
Extraction of volatiles and metals from extraterrestrial materials
Recent progress in defining the physical, orbital, and chemical properties of the Earth-crossing asteroid and comet population was integrated into an elaborate Monte Carlo model of the fluxes of bodies in the inner Solar System. This model is of use in projecting flight opportunities to as-yet undiscovered near-Earth objects and in assessing the impact hazard to life on Earth and the evolutionary consequences of impacts on the other terrestrial planets. Further progress was made in defining desirable transportation system architectures for the use of non-terrestrial volatiles and metals, including the delivery of propellants to near-Earth space for fueling of space exploration initiative (SEI) type expeditions, the construction and resupply of Solar Power Satellite constellations in various Earth orbits (including geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO) and Highly Eccentric Earth Orbit (HEEO)), and retrieval of He-3 for use as a clean fusion fuel on Earth. These studies suggest a greater future role for SERC in the exploration of space energy sources to meet Earth's 21st-century energy requirements. Laboratory studies of volatilization and deposition of ferrous metal alloys demonstrated deposition of strong iron films from carbonyl chemical vapor deposition (CVD), showing the crucial role of additive gases in governing the CVD process, and pointing the way to specific experiments on extraction and deposition of ferrous metals from nonterrestrial materials.
Lewis, J. S.↗