Mission Overviews for Comet, Moon, and Earth scenarios

1) Rendezvous with a Comet

In the not-too-distant future, teams of scientists are routinely using small, maneuverable space stations to venture out into Earth's "neighborhood" as part of a long-term study of small bodies in the Solar System. Primary targets include comets and asteroids, which scientists believe are the oldest, most primitive bodies in the Solar System and may preserve the earliest record of the material that formed Earth and its planetary neighbors.

During this mission, team members work as scientists and engineers headed to Rendezvous with a Comet as part of this continued study of our Solar System. These rendezvous missions are critical in helping scientists verify and better understand data collected by earlier small body missions occurring at the start of the new Millenium, such as STARDUST and its planned capture of cometary material from comet Wild-2 in 2004 and the return of that material to Earth in 2006. The actual samples provided by STARDUST established detailed baseline data on comets still used today. The onboard astronauts, working with their counterparts in Mission Control, are tasked with sending a probe to intercept and collect new data in a well-studied short-period comet before heading on for a continued study of the asteroid Ceres, the largest known asteroid at 623 miles (1,003 km) in diameter.

Comet Enke provides an excellent target because its short period (3.3 years) has allowed it to be observed from Earth at more apparitions (or appearances) than any other comet, including the famous Comet Halley. Encke continues to puzzle scientists because even though it has been in a short-period orbit for thousands of years, the comet continues to have a high level of activity as the Sun's heat boils off its dirty ice into gases and dust. This is the first probe to rendezvous with Encke since 2003 and the fly-by of the comet- chasing CONTOUR spacecraft.

The small, maneuverable space stations used for these rendezvous missions require lots of maintenance and care, providing plenty of challenges for the crews in space and on the ground. Navigating into the correct position for probe launches - not to mention sending a probe through the material surrounding an active comet - also requires concentration and teamwork to successfully collect vital scientific information and complete the mission.

Small bodies in the Solar System are also highly unpredictable objects and have been known to surprise scientists from time to time, so crew members will also need to be alert and ready to make quick decisions.

All About Comets

Comets are mysterious, distant travelers originating from the depths of our solar system and orbiting the sun in a highly elliptical path. Star gazers see comets as specters with luminous tails arching across the night sky for a month or two, and then disappearing from sight. Some comets never come back, with orbital periods of tens of thousands of years. Only approximately 184 of 878 known comets are calculated to have periodic orbits of less than 200 years long. For this reason, seeing comets like Halley's Comet, with its seventy-six year orbit, is often a once in a lifetime experience. Comets are scientifically valuable because they may be remnants of the material out of which the planets and moons formed. Comets may even contain clues about early life on Earth.

Sometimes called "dirty snowballs" comets are small, irregularly shaped lumps of rock, dust, and ice. They originate in either the Kuiper Belt, located outside Neptune's and Pluto's orbit, or in the Oort Cloud, hundreds of times farther away from Pluto extending halfway to the nearest star. Gravitational disturbances can cause a comet to go hurling toward the Sun. As a comet enters the inner solar system, heat from the Sun vaporizes the ice, forming an enormous cloud of gas and dust around the tiny comet. The closer the comet gets to the Sun, the more gas and dust blow away forming a tail that stretches out millions of kilometers. As the comet travels away from the Sun to the outer reaches of the solar system, the tail shortens and the gas cloud disappears.

The origin of the word comet comes from the Greek word for hair. Our ancestors thought comets were new stars with what looked like long, flowing hair trailing behind them. The "hairy" star suddenly appeared and moved across the night sky only to disappear again a few weeks or months later.

Our ancestors considered comets to be Portents of evil. To thwart the curse of the comet, Emperor Nero had all possible successors executed. A comet was sighted before the Battle of Hastings which was interpreted to mean King Harold would lose his throne to William, the Duke of Normandy. This came to pass. In Peru, the sighting of the comet preceded Francisco Pisarro's conquest of the Incas.

Even in the recent past, comet panic caused terror. In Chicago people sealed windows against the poisonous tail of the comet. Others committed suicide. In Oklahoma police saved a virgin from being sacrificed by a comet cult.

	On July 20, 1969 American astronaut Neil Armstrong descended the ladder of his lunar lander to step on soil which no human had touched before. It is now the year 2015 and the Moon missions continue....
	This time, a permanent base will be established there. One final decision needs to be made: where is the best site for the landing and building the base?

The Scenario:

The new millennium is still young, but humans are preparing to return to the Moon, spurred on by the verification of ice water on the lunar surface by the Lunar Prospector in 1998. Composed of hydrogen and oxygen - the elements that make up water - the lunar ice provides a core resource for long-term human presence on the lunar surface.

Lunar Prospector was followed by a series of successful robotic missions designed to prove the concept that ice water can be harvested. Once collected, the ice water can be turned into drinking water, oxygen for life support on a lunar base, nutrients as the basis for agriculture, components needed for rocket fuel, or, when combined with lunar soil, the basics for construction materials.

Not only did those robotic missions successfully prove the concept, but since then, additional robotic staging missions have landed and begun manufacturing these essential resources. As part of the Return to the Moon mission, this crew of astronauts will - for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 - land on the surface of the Moon. This time the astronauts are there to establish a permanent base with the core goals of:

• establishing an observation program to study the Earth and other Solar System bodies without the interference of the Earth's atmosphere
• testing the feasibility of a self-sustaining, off-planet settlement
• serving as a staging area for additional human exploration of our Solar System

The Return to the Moon mission begins with the spacecraft in Earth's orbit and the Mission Control team monitoring the crew's status. The crew aboard the spacecraft will leave Earth's orbit and travel to the Moon using the latest in transport technology to reduce the travel time. In addition to verifying the best site for the establishment of the lunar base during the course of the mission, the crew will build and launch a probe to the lunar surface, recover a probe that is stranded in space, and repair the damaged probe.

Some information has been previously obtained from the potential lunar base sites. A detailed study has determined that the base site must contain soils, metals, and potentially useful resources such as helium-3. Rock and soil samples, soil composition, and seismic information have been gathered by previous missions from portions of the potential sites. Experiments on soil and rock samples from other possible sites must be performed in order to determine the best site for the lunar base. The crew will navigate their spacecraft to the Moon and plot an acceptable orbit.

Together the crew will place their spaceship into lunar orbit and make the important decision about the location of the first permanent lunar base. To gather the data needed to analyze potential lunar base sites, the crew will have to function as a team and utilize their best communications and analytical skills.

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 3) Earth from Orbit  

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