Near Earth Asteroids and Space Missions

The near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) are a population of objects on orbits around the Sun that cross or come near that of Earth.  They represent remnants of material from the early solar system that never accreted into planets.  In addition to scientific motivations, NEAs are important because of the Earth impact hazard - dramatically demonstrated by the impact of a small NEA in the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013.  Many NEAs are accessible targets for spacecraft missions; some require less fuel to get to than the Moon.  I will review the near-Earth population and efforts to discover and characterize NEAs from the ground.  Then I will describe past, upcoming, and potential future NEA missions by NASA, ESA, JAXA, the Chinese National Space Agency, and other groups.

Speaker: Michael Busch, SETI