Combined amateur telescopes for asteroid detection.

Copyright 2016 Robert Clark

 NASA is conducting an interesting program to get the public involved in the upcoming ORISIS-REx mission to retrieve a sample from an asteroid. It is asking amateur astronomers to make observations of known asteroids using their telescopes:

Target Asteroids!

http://www.asteroidmission.org/get-involved/target-asteroids/

 However, a slight modification of this program should allow it to also to discover unknown asteroids. This article discusses that even an 8-inch scope equipped with a CCD camera can discover new asteroids:

Hunting Asteroids From Your Backyard
By: Dennis Di Cicco | July 28, 2006

There are no hard and fast rules regarding the telescope or CCD camera needed for asteroid work. To be effective, the system should record stars as faint as 18th magnitude with a single, 4-minute exposure. Almost any CCD camera on an 8-inch telescope can do this under a clear, dark sky.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/celestial-objects-to-watch/hunting-asteroids-from-your-backyard/

 The article discusses down to magnitude 18. But combining the observations of many of these scopes acting in concert should allow the discovery of asteroids of weaker magnitude and therefore smaller size.

 As discussed in the article, CCD's can have imaging artifacts where a pixel will show as lit but it's not really corresponding to a light photon hitting the device. Moreover, the weaker the imaging source, the more difficult it is distinguish these imaging artifacts from a real light source.

 However, since these imaging artifacts are occurring at random, the idea would be to have several of the amateur scopes from different parts of the world focused on the same spot in the sky. Then several of the scopes' CCD's registering a hit on a pixel corresponding to the same point in the sky at the same time would be taken as indicating a real light source.

 The scopes would have to have a high degree of sky location specificity and timing synchronization for this to work.

 

 Another aspect of the imaging artifacts of the CCD's is that at low imaging illumination the CCD might correctly register a lit pixel but at a later time not register it. For individual scopes used to detect asteroids, it's done by noticing the light source moving between exposures. But if the imaging light source is too weak the CCD for the scope might not register the light source the second time to detect the motion. Then in this proposal of using multiple scopes, you also need to be able to correlate a second detection by another scope as indicating the light source moved, even if this scope did not detect the light source the first time. All the information would need to be correlated at a central site for this to work.

 Then after sufficient numbers of scopes give a high level of confidence the asteroid is indeed there, larger professional telescopes could be used to confirm the detection.

 This would have importance also for planetary protection purposes since it would allow the detection of smaller asteroids.

Credit and Financial Rewards for the Discovery?
 Certainly the amateur astronomers whose scopes detected the asteroid should get credit for the discovery. But an intriguing question of financial rewards arises because of the companies such as Planetary Resources, Inc. and Deep Space Industries that are working towards returning valuable minerals from asteroids. According to this article an asteroid potentially worth $5 trillion in platinum passed nearby to Earth last year:

‘Platinum’ asteroid potentially worth $5.4 trillion to pass Earth on Sunday.
Published time: 18 Jul, 2015 11:21
https://www.rt.com/news/310170-platinum-asteroid-2011-uw-158/

 There are very many near Earth asteroids still to be discovered. Then one can imagine these coordinated amateur scopes detecting one of these highly valuable asteroids. If one of them is eventually used to recover valuable minerals should the amateur astronomers who discovered it take part in the financial rewards?

 Not an easy question but it is notable that it would increase the interest and participation of amateur astronomers in the program. In view of its potential importance for planetary defense purposes this participation should be encouraged.

   Bob Clark

The Commercial Space Approach to Beyond Low Earth Orbit Spaceflight.

Copyright 2014 Robert Clark

 The National Research Council has released a report on NASA's plans for human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit (BEO). It confirmed what many observers of the space program had already realized that NASA's current approach is unfocused and uninspiring, and most importantly unlikely to succeed:

NASA could not deliver humans to Mars, says new strategy report.
Published time: June 05, 2014 02:39
Landing humans on Mars is unattainable for NASA if the space agency’s current strategy and level of funding are not modified in the near future, according to a new congressionally-mandated report.
…
Of the three pathways to Mars that NRC suggested, two were associated with a return to the moon. A lunar landing and habitat would hone technologies that could later be employed on a Mars mission, the report said.
The Obama administration has publicly expressed distaste for continued, expensive moon landings. In outlining US space policy in 2010, President Barack Obama said, “I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before.”
The third option outlined by the report includes the Asteroid Redirect Mission, a plan still in the study phase but currently endorsed by the Obama administration.
Such a mission would send robotic spacecraft to essentially grab and re-orbit an asteroid passing near Earth, allowing astronauts to take samples of the rock.
That mission, though, is not preferred by authors of the report. Safety issues and development of “dead end” technologies render the asteroid mission inferior if NASA wants to reach Mars, it said.
The asteroid option “cannot provide the flight frequency required to maintain competence and safety,” the report posits.
http://rt.com/usa/163736-mars-nasa-funding-strategy/


 A major problem is that NASA is taking the Apollo approach to such missions, which required huge expenditures:

It’s time for NASA to abandon the Apollo mission model.
by John K. Strickland
Monday, June 23, 2014
What, then, is the opposite of the Apollo Mission model? It is the concept of a set of continuing missions designed to operate with a set of reusable space vehicles (both for crew and cargo), allowing the creation (and construction) of enduring infrastructure in specific locations in space and at surface destinations beyond low Earth orbit, using local materials, and making each subsequent mission easier, safer, and cheaper. One very critical aspect of this concept is the use of fully reusable spacecraft in an integrated cislunar transport system. Despite its name, such a cislunar system is not focused exclusively on access to the Moon, but to multiple cislunar and other inner solar system destinations. While at least one booster is about one year away from being operationally reusable, almost all spacecraft and other boosters are not, and according to some are in fact prohibited from being reused by NASA.
http://thespacereview.com/article/2537/1


  The Apollo program absorbed 5% of the federal budget at the time. This is compared to the 0.5% NASA currently gets. If NASA were funded to the same extent as during the Apollo era, it would be getting in the range of $180 billion per year(!) That's not happening.

 However, there is a way to get similar results without the huge payouts, and that is to follow the commercial space approach. Both SpaceX and Orbital Sciences were able to develop both launchers and capsules at 1/10th the cost of the usual fully-funded government projects. That's four separate systems able to cut 90% off the development costs. That is not just a coincidence.

 Detractors of commercial space have complained the name is a misnomer for they still get federal funding. However, the name you apply to it is irrelevant. What is important is the results you get for an order of magnitude lower cost. For the commercial space approach to work though the companies involved have to be convinced they can make a profit on the projects, for it involves a public and private partnership where the companies share part of the development cost, rather than it being fully government funded.

 But what BEO projects can be expected to make a profit? Well, SpaceX believes they can make a profit on making passenger flights to Mars, and the Golden Spike Company and Bigelow Aerospace believe they can make a profit by making crewed flights to the Moon. Also, Planetary Resources Inc. and Deep Space Industries believe they can make a profit on asteroid mining.

 This will be dependent though on these companies being willing and able to provide the needed funding for their part of the costs. For companies like SpaceX and Bigelow with wealthy, visionary leaders such as Elon Musk and Robert Bigelow this will likely be possible. But for the other start-up companies clearly this will depend on the size of the investment they need to make. Then a quite key fact to keep in mind is actually such missions can be accomplished at orders of magnitude lower costs than the amounts NASA estimates.

 The example of a lunar lander illuminates this quite clearly. NASA has said that we can't afford to return to the Moon because a manned lunar lander would cost $10 billion to develop. But the examples of the Masten XEUS lunar lander and the NASA Morpheus lunar lander show a manned lander actually can be developed for only a few ten's of millions of dollars in development cost. And the costs that need to be borne by the companies will be even less with the cost-sharing with government space agencies.

  I used the term "government space agencies" instead of NASA intentionally. The costs that needed to be borne by the companies would be reduced even further when more than one space agency contributed to the costs. For instance both NASA and ESA are contributing to the development of the Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser spacecraft. You could conceivably have all of NASA, ESA, JAXA, and Roscosmos contributing to the development cost of the BEO projects. Then the costs financed by the companies might only be 1/5th that of the already low commercial-space-approach development cost.

  Bob Clark

Low cost development and applications of the new NRO donated telescopes.

Copyright 2012 Robert Clark

Credit: simulated image of Hubble-class telescope at Mars from NASA images.

NASA gets two military spy telescopes for astronomy. 
By Joel Achenbach, Published: June 4 
The announcement Monday raised the obvious question of why the 
intelligence agency would no longer want, or need, two Hubble-class 
telescopes. A spokeswoman, Loretta DeSio, provided information 
sparingly. 
“They no longer possessed intelligence-collection uses,” she said of 
the telescopes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nasa-gets-military-spy-telescopes-for-astronomy/2012/06/04/gJQAsT6UDV_story.html 

The explanation clearly is that Hubble scale telescopes are now obsolete for surveillance as I earlier argued, [1].

Asteroid Detection for Planetary Defense and Asteroidal Prospecting.

 A useful application of the new scopes would be detection of asteroids for planetary defense purposes, and for the new asteroid mining ventures. For instance the wide field camera on the WISE mission satellite was able to find this Trojan class asteroid:

NASA's WISE Mission Finds First Trojan Asteroid Sharing Earth's Orbit.
07.27.11 

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/news/wise20110727.html
  

 The mirror on the new scopes is 100 inches compared to 16 inches for the WISE mission satellite, resulting in nearly 40 times greater collecting area and sensitivity.

 In fact, NASA might be able to have the satellite development be partially funded by the asteroid mining ventures. If so, then the development could be done much more cheaply with a commercial approach to their development.

 Indeed Planetary Resources referred to the NASA WISE satellite in stating they could produce comparable telescopes to the WISE at 1 to 2 order of magnitude lower costs:

Billionaire-backed asteroid mining venture starts with space telescopes.

The key factor is the cost: Lewicki noted that an imaging instrument like NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer would typically cost hundreds of millions of dollars. "We're looking to go one to two orders of magnitude below that," he said.  [2]

 For a Hubble-class telescope this would be reduced at least to the few hundred million dollar cost range, thus solving the funding problem NASA has for deploying such scopes. That the scopes could indeed be produced at such reduced costs is given credence by the fact that SpaceX was able to cut development costs both for their launchers and their spacecraft by an order of magnitude by following a commercial approach to their development. 

 Note also that Hubble was designed and built in the 1980's, 25 years ago. From Moore's law there have been major reductions in size and cost of electronic components since then, which  further supports the idea the development costs can be done much more cheaply now for the instruments than was the case for Hubble.

 For the launch costs, Hubble was done by the shuttle with a ca. 20 mT payload capacity. So a Hubble-class scope launched just to LEO could be done by any of the current largest launchers with a 20 mT capacity to LEO, at costs in the $200 million range. 

 However, Hubble was just barely above 10 mT in weight, at about 11 mT. Reportedly these new scopes weigh less than Hubble and with the reduction and size and weight in electronics since the time Hubble was developed, these new scopes quite likely could be brought in at 10 mT or less. In that case they could be launched to LEO by a Falcon 9 at a $50 million launch cost.

Mars Imaging Satellites.

 Another useful application of one of the scopes would be for a Mars orbital satellite. Again as developed by Planetary Resources in a commercial approach to the development it could be done for a few hundred million dollars. 

 The mirror on the current highest resolution Mars satellite Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter(MRO) has a 20 inch diameter with a resolution on the Mars surface of 25 centimeters, about 10 inches. Then the 100 inch diameter on the Hubble class scope would give a resolution of 5 centimeters, about 2 inches. 

 MRO came within 100 km of the surface at periapsis during aerobraking on Mars, [3], while its final orbit was at about 300 km. However, MRO did not do imaging at closest approach during aerobraking. If a Hubble class scope did such imaging, then at 100 km altitude it could get sub-inch resolution at periapsis.

 Mars orbiting satellites typically have both wide field and narrow field cameras, with the wide field cameras giving much courser resolution than the narrow field. However, these new scopes reportedly can give resolution nearly as good as Hubble even with a wide field. 

 This is important because for the Mars orbiters when taking their highest resolution images with the narrow field cameras, the coverage of the surface is quite spotty. However, with these new scopes having wide field capability at high resolution you can get entire surface coverage at high resolution. This would require high data throughput of course which should now be possible with state of art computer storage density and processing speeds.

 For the launch cost, Robert Zubrin suggests the Falcon Heavy could send 14 mT to Mars orbit with a conventional hydrogen-fueled upper stage, say of Centaur-type, [4]. A single one of the current largest Centaurs at 20 mT gross mass probably wouldn't do it though. You would need two, either parallel or serially staged. At a Centaur cost of $30 million, assign $60 million for the cost of the upper stage. Then with a $100 million cost of the Falcon Heavy, the launch cost would probably be under $200 million, when you add on the cost of integrating the Centaurs to the rest of the vehicle.

Speculations on the Next Mars Imaging Satellites after the Hubble-class.

 Because of the ever improving resolution of orbital satellites sent to Mars, I once wrote rather tongue-in-cheek that we will soon be able to resolve Martian microbes from orbit, [5]. However, remarkable new research might imply such astonishing resolution near term might actually come to pass. 

 To get such high resolution from orbit would require an impractically large mirror, one might  think. This is because the diffraction limit of classical electromagnetic wave theory puts limits on the degree of resolution you can get for a given size mirror. However, new research in "negative refractive index" materials shows using quantum mechanics you can get resolution actually beyond the diffraction limit. The result is you can get much better resolution for a given size mirror than previously thought possible, [6], [7].

  Bob Clark

REFERENCES.

1.)Newsgroups: sci.astro, sci.physics, sci.space.policy, sci.astro.amateur, us.military.army 
From: Robert Clark <rgregorycl...@yahoo.com> 
Date: 23 Apr 2007 02:49:39 -0700 
Subject: Orbital surveillance satellites now exceed 1 inch resolution. 

https://groups.google.com/group/sci.astro/browse_thread/thread/eac3f1699e0bf014?hl=en 

2.)Billionaire-backed asteroid mining venture starts with space telescopes.

23 Apr, 2012 11:37pm, EDT

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11339522-billionaire-backed-asteroid-mining-venture-starts-with-space-telescopes?lite

3.)Mars cameras debut as NASA craft adjusts orbit.

MISSION STATUS REPORT
Posted: April 13, 2006

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0604/14mro/  

4.)The Use of SpaceX Hardware to Accomplish Near-Term Human Mars Mission.

Robert Zubrin, Pioneer Astronautics, 05.15.11
http://www.marssociety.org/home/press/news/theuseofspacexhardwaretoaccomplishnear-termhumanmarsmission

5.)Newsgroups: sci.astro, sci.physics, sci.geo.geology, alt.sci.planetary, sci.astro.amateur

From: "Robert Clark" <rgregorycl...@yahoo.com>

Date: 10 Jan 2007 09:12:09 -0800

Subject: We will soon be able to resolve Mars microbes from orbit. ;-)

https://groups.google.com/group/sci.astro/browse_thread/thread/f9a8a7f0e40ee055/9285f68b4374d5f6?hl=en 

6.)Negative index metamaterials.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_refractive_index 

7.)Superlens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_lens