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NASA's "Hitchhiker" Spacecraft Could Catch Rides With Comets

Get your towel ready, because NASA has released a concept for a spacecraft that moves through the stars by "hitchhiking" with comets and asteroids.

By Flicky Fri 02 Oct, 2015 7:10 PM - Last Updated: Sun 03 Apr, 2016 10:42 PM
Get your towel ready, because NASA has released a concept for a spacecraft that moves through the stars by "hitchhiking" with comets and asteroids.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
The aptly-named concept, Comet Hitchhiker, was designed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Comet Hitchhiker would use a harpoon and tether system to hook onto a moving celestial object and match speeds with it. From there, it could either reel itself in and land on the object to study it, or hitchhike with it until a time when it could release itself and head toward another object.

Comet Hitchhiker would collect energy by applying a brake while reeling in, allowing some of the energy of the ship’s acceleration to be reused by the ship later. The tether would be reusable, allowing the ship to conduct multiple studies. Principal investigator at NASA’S JPL, Michael Ono, proposed that “this kind of hitchhiking could be used for multiple targets in the main asteroid belt or the Kuiper Belt, even five to 10 in a single mission.”

Researchers working on the project have created what they call the Space Hitchhike Equation to facilitate the project. This equation relates the tension and strength of the tether to the change of speed required to make landing or hitchhiking maneuvers. The tether - which the researchers say would need to be from 100 to 1,000 kilometers (62 to 620 miles) long and made of materials with similar strength to Zylon or Kevlar - would negate the need for fuel beyond the initial launch into space. “In Comet Hitchhiker, accelerating and decelerating do not require propellant because the spacecraft is harvesting kinetic energy from the target,” Ono explained.

Comet Hitchhiker is currently in Phase I study, and the next steps for the concept are to run high-fidelity simulations and test casting a model of the harpoon at a target mimicking the surface of a comet or asteroid.

DO YOU THINK WE WILL EVER SEE COMET HITCHHIKER COME TO FRUITION?

WRITTEN BY BEN KELDER | FLICKY
EDITED BY CALLIB CARVER | KRAZIYK - CALLIB.CARVER@UFPLANETS.COM
1 Comment
Tue 06 Oct, 2015 5:18 PM
Thank you for this article. I think this is an interesting concept and could be a good way to mine comets or asteroids with less cost than using a type of drone that needs to jet around to different asteroids. I suspect that the material or manufacturing process to make a tether of sufficient length or strength is currently not available though.