I want to thank Harley and Dan for pointing to this blog in their article. I try my best to highlight the presentations given to the group (see the FISO Working Group Presentations Archive) . I find the topics discussed to be among the most interesting and important spaceflight concepts and projects of our day. Development of an in-space infrastructure is clearly key to practical and affordable utilization of space and to making humanity truly spacefaring.
Here is an animation of the flyby of asteroid 2012 DA14. On February 15th, the 45 meter diameter asteroid will pass just 27,700 kilometers (17,200 mi) above the Earth’s surface.
The simulation was made with NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System program by Adrian Wenz of BINARY SPACE. It shows the flyby from the viewpoint of the asteroid and includes the positions of a number of satellites.
ESA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (which runs several space missions including the Messenger probe now orbiting Mercury) are proposing a joint experiment to test impact deflection of an asteroid. A JHU-APL spacecraft would ram into an asteroid while an ESA spacecraft would monitor the impact and its effects on the object.
