NASA Flooded With More Than 400 Enthusiastic Responses For Asteroid Exploration Mission

A proposal made by NASA that has created a huge buzz is the June month's solicitation that focused on finding all asteroids threats to human population. The space agency has received more than 400 responses to its Asteroid Initiative Request for Information (RFI).

"Under our plan, we're increasing the identification, tracking and exploration of asteroids, and the response to this initiative has been gratifying," Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said at the Space Frontier Foundation's NewSpace 2013 conference in San Jose, Calif. "The aerospace industry, innovative small businesses and citizen scientists have many creative ideas and strategies for carrying out our asteroid exploration mission and helping us to protect our home planet from dangerous near-Earth objects."

The Request for Information (RFI) that was released on June 18, was the first opportunity for the industry, other partners, scientists, academics, engineers and other civilians to participate in this mission and contribute their ideas towards NASA's Asteroid Initiative that includes redirecting an asteroid to the lunar orbit in 2017 and later sending astronauts to the asteroid's surface to investigate it. As well as the agency's Asteroid Grand challenge that focuses on hunting all asteroids that pose a threat to Earthlings.

According to Garver, all the responses will be evaluated and rated. About a third of the responses are relevant to the asteroid grand challenger while the other responses are related to the five mission components. The response that bags the highest rating will be explored by NASA to add it in future planning during the September's public workshop.

Tom Kalil, deputy director for technology and innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, praised the efforts of NASA saying, "I applaud NASA for issuing this Grand Challenge because finding asteroid threats, and having a plan for dealing with them, needs to be an all-hands-on-deck effort."

NASA has an $18 billion proposed budget for 2014, out which it plans to keep $105 million for the asteroid mission.