The Exploration Of NASA Curiosity And Exploration

Curiosity and exploration are hardwired into our basic human nature. We strive to understand and explore the environment around us. From individuals climbing Mt. Everest, to those journeying deep into the Amazon Rainforest, it is our innate desire to discover and be adventurous. It is natural that this desire would eventually turn to areas beyond our planet. In the late 1950’s the escalation of the Cold War led to the space race. It started with the launch of the satellite Sputnik I by Russia, and produced amazing feats such as the United States putting a man on the moon. During the height of the space race, NASA was receiving 4.31 % of the national budget (Office of Management and Budget), and it took only eight years for NASA to reach the

It had originally planned a return mission to the Moon, the Constellation Program, but with the forced cancellation of that project, NASA has now turned its attention to two possible exploration missions: The Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and a manned mission to Mars. These are the most essential exploration missions that require the most attention and funding. The ARM consists of NASA launching an unmanned probe that will travel to an asteroid “close” to Earth. It will then capture the asteroid and transport it back and place it in orbit around the moon. This will provide NASA an opportunity to essentially “mine” an asteroid and discover exactly what minerals are stored in asteroids. The success of this mission could potentially lead to a new source of materials that may not even exist on Earth. In his book titled “Entering Space,” Aerospace engineer, Robert Zubrin speculates that an asteroid 1 kilometer in diameter would contain $150 billion in platinum alone (Zubrin, 146). Platinum is the rarest metal on our planet and there have been estimates that one-fifth of everything we use or manufacture contains platinum. Furthermore, Zubrin states, “there are over 5,000 asteroids known today” (Zubrin, 147). One asteroid can yield billions in potential resources, if there was a push to mine these asteroids, the U.S. as well as the world’s economy could rise to unimaginable levels. The first step to accomplishing this task is giving NASA the required funding to develop spacecraft that are capable of reaching these objects. With current propulsion systems, the idea of traveling to asteroids is not likely, nor profitable. Zubrin argues “it can safely be said that useful trade between Earth… and any other body in the Main Belt using chemical propulsion is probably impossible” (Zubrin, 149). This means that current rocket technology is not anywhere near