NASA

NASA contemplated setting up a lunar outpost like the one shown in this artwork back in 2007. Now House Republicans are reviving the idea of establishing a "sustained human presence" on the moon and Mars.

House Republican leaders want to push for outposts on the moon and Mars — and they want to push NASA's plan to snare an asteroid into the dustbin, according to a discussion draft of their space spending plan.

"It is the policy of the United States that the development of capabilities and technologies necessary for human missions to lunar orbit, the surface of the moon, the surface of Mars, and beyond shall be the goals of the administration's human space flight program," the GOP version of the NASA authorization bill states.

One of the goals would be "to develop a sustained human presence on the moon and Mars," according to the draft, which is expected to come under discussion at a House Science space subcommittee hearing on Wednesday. NBC News received a copy of the draft in advance — as did several other media outlets, including Politico and Space News.

Axing the asteroid mission
The draft bill would block the Obama administration's initiative to send a robotic probe to a near-Earth asteroid in 2017, with the aim of bringing back the space rock — or a substantial piece of it — for study by astronauts in the vicinity of the moon around 2021. On Tuesday, NASA touted the plan as part of an initiative that also includes a stepped-up program to identify potentially threatening asteroids and figure out what to do about them.

During a recent round of hearings, congressional Republicans were supportive of the asteroid-hunting effort, but sharply critical of the asteroid-grabbing mission. That's reflected in the draft legislation.

The draft would hold NASA's spending level at $16.9 billion, in accordance with the current sequestration situation, but it leaves the way open for increased funding if a deal is struck to loosen the budgetary purse strings. It would continue to fund NASA's major development projects, including the Orion crew capsule, the heavy-lift rocket known as the Space Launch System, and the James Webb Space Telescope. It also sets aside $700 million for supporting the development of crew-capable commercial spaceships — which is less than the administration's budget request of more than $820 million.

Debate over moon and Mars
The main point of debate is likely to be the thumbs-up for outposts on the moon and Mars, and the thumbs-down for the asteroid mission that has become the Obama administration's main focus for space exploration. NASA has said such a mission would help clear the way for exploration of Mars and its moons in the mid-2030s.

The idea of establishing a lunar base arguably played a role in the decline of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's fortunes in the 2012 presidential campaign. Gingrich's plan to have a moon base in operation by 2020 drew derision from Mitt Romney, who said he'd fire any employee who suggested spending hundreds of billions of dollars on such a venture.

Estimates for the cost of building a moon base have run from $40 billion to $500 billion, depending on whether the person doing the estimating wants to encourage or discourage the idea. In comparison, estimates for the total marginal cost of the asteroid redirect mission have been in the range of $1 billion to $2.6 billion.

The draft authorization bill doesn't address the long-term spending projections or schedules for missions to the moon and Mars. Rather, it advocates a step-by-step, "go-as-we-can-afford-to-pay" approach. That carries the risk of giving NASA an ambitious goal without adequate funding to get there — which was the fatal flaw in President George W. Bush's plan to send astronauts to the moon.

The bill is likely to join the Obama administration's budget proposal as one of the starting points for debate over the future of the space effort. Yet another starting point should come to light when Senate Democrats lay out their version of the NASA authorization bill.

More about space visions:

• Which way to Mars? Moon or asteroid?
• NASA touts plan to grab asteroid
• Private spaceflight study aims for moon

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA

An artist's conception shows a robotic probe, powered by a solar electric propulsion system, closing in to corral an asteroid. NASA is aiming to send out such a probe in 2017.

NASA's latest "Grand Challenge" is a biggie: Can you think of better ways to find potentially threatening near-Earth asteroids and do something about those threats? Your ideas could become part of the space agency's vision for the next decade.

The Asteroid Grand Challenge was announced on Tuesday at NASA Headquarters in Washington, but a lot of the details still have to be filled in. For instance, what are the specific tasks to be covered by the challenge? How much money will it take to stimulate the required innovations? Over the next month, NASA is gathering ideas under the terms of a request for information, with the aim of setting up a game plan for the years ahead.

"The purpose of the Grand Challenge is a call to action to continue the awareness around the issue of asteroid threats," Jason Kessler, NASA's program executive for the Asteroid Grand Challenge, told NBC News.

The program complements NASA's initiative to identify and bring back an asteroid so that astronauts can study it in the vicinity of the moon. It also meshes with NASA's long-running program to identify near-Earth asteroids.

"NASA already is working to find asteroids that might be a threat to our planet, and while we have found 95 percent of the large asteroids near the Earth's orbit, we need to find all those that might be a threat to Earth," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said in an agency news release. "This Grand Challenge is focused on detecting and characterizing asteroids and learning how to deal with potential threats. We will also harness public engagement, open innovation and citizen science to help solve this global problem."

All this interest in asteroids got an extra jolt in February when a meteor blast sent a shock wave sweeping over Siberia, injuring more than 1,000 people. The 55-foot-wide (17-meter-wide) space rock behind that flare-up was relatively small, as space threats go, but even somewhat larger rocks are difficult to detect in advance using current tools. The Grand Challenge is meant to stimulate the development of new tools and techniques, Kessler said.

For instance, the program might encourage the development of nanosatellites equipped with expandable pop-out mirrors that could do a better job of detecting dim asteroids. It could offer prizes for improving the software that models an asteroid's shape. Or it could establish school observation networks to bring the power of crowdsourcing to asteroid detection.

"I guarantee you there's a number of great ideas out there that I'd never come up with," Kessler said. "We're being very deliberate in not saying 'this is the way it's going to be,' except to say this is how it's going to be to promote, engage and solicit ideas from the myriad number of great thinkers."

The program is being supported with funds that are being set aside for asteroid detection, but it's too early to estimate how much money the Grand Challenge would get, Kessler said.

The Obama administration has proposed spending $47 million over the next fiscal year on the entire asteroid detection effort, with $7 million of that to be used specifically to prepare for the asteroid-grabbing mission and the Asteroid Grand Challenge. The current plan calls for a robotic probe to be sent out toward an asteroid in 2017, so that it can be brought back for study by astronauts around 2021. Although the target asteroid hasn't yet been identified, NASA has said it would be in the range of 7 to 10 meters wide. There's a chance that the probe might break off a piece of a bigger asteroid and bring it back as an alternative.

Update for 10:20 p.m. ET June 18: The B612 Foundation has been working for years to raise awareness on the asteroid threat, and is also trying to raise money for an asteroid-hunting space telescope. Former NASA astronaut Ed Lu, the foundation's CEO, issued this statement relating to NASA's Grand Challenge:

"This morning, the White House and NASA announced an Asteroid Grand Challenge, 'focused on finding all asteroid threats to human populations and knowing what to do with them.' This directly mirrors the mission of the non-profit private B612 Foundation and our Sentinel Mission, and we strongly applaud NASA and the Obama administration for their leadership in raising the visibility of this critical issue and for establishing detection of asteroids as a national priority. The administration has called for a team 'of the best and brightest' working on this together, and we look forward to increased collaboration and partnership.

"There are one million asteroids with the potential to impact Earth with energy large enough to obliterate any major city. We believe that the goal must be to find these one million asteroids — anything less, in our opinion, would not meet the intent of this Grand Challenge."

More about asteroids:

• Asteroid perils and profits draw interest
• Amateurs boost hunt for asteroids
• Cosmic Log archive on asteroids

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Asteroid 1998 QE2 turns while its moon zips upward. Credit: Ellen Howell / NASA / Arecibo

The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has captured the most detailed radar images yet of asteroid 1998 QE2 and its newly discovered moon.

A sequence of pictures released on Friday shows the 1.9-mile-wide (3-kilometer-wide) asteroid rotating in outer space while its 2,500-foot-long (750-meter-long companion zips around it. The asteroid and its moon sped past Earth harmlessly at a minimum distance of 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers) on May 31.

"Asteroid QE2 has no chance of hitting Earth," Michael Nolan, head of the 1,000-foot-wide (300-meter-wide) telescope's asteroid radar group, said in a statement from the Universities Space Research Association, or USRA.

The Arecibo Observatory, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, is the world's largest and most sensitive single-dish radio telescope. Astronomers have been using Arecibo and NASA's Goldstone radar installation in California to track the movements of 1998 QE2 and its moon after its close encounter. Radar readings have revealed craters on the surface of the large rock.

Scientists estimate that one-sixth of all near-Earth asteroids have moons. "QE2's moon is roughly one-quarter the size of the main asteroid," said Patrick Taylor a USRA research astronomer at Arecibo. "Similarly, our moon is also approximately one-fourth the size of our planet."

Analyzing the motion of QE2's moon will help scientists determine the mass of the main asteroid.

"Being able to determine its mass from the moon helps us understand better the asteroid's material," said Ellen Howell, a USRA research astronomer who captured radar images of the asteroid at Arecibo and optical and infrared images using the Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii. The optical images can provide spectral data, revealing what the asteroid is made of.

"What makes this asteroid so interesting, aside from being an excellent target for radar imaging, is the color and small moon," Howell said in the USRA statement. "Asteroid QE2 is dark, red, and primitive — that is, it hasn't been heated or melted as much as other asteroids. QE2 is nothing like any asteroid we've visited with a spacecraft, or plan to, or that we have meteorites from. It's an entirely new beast in the menagerie of asteroids near Earth."

1998 QE2 gets its name from the timing of its discovery. The "QE2" refers to the order in which the asteroid was found during the latter half of August 1998. For what it's worth, 1998 QE2's diameter is nine times the length of the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2.

More about asteroids:

• Huge asteroid's flyby captured in new video
• 1998 QE2 sails past earth, leaving lessons behind
• Cosmic Log archive on asteroids

USRA's Michael Nolan led the radar observations of QE2, along with Ellen Howell, Patrick Taylor, Alessondra Springmann, Sean Marshall of Cornell University, and Mariah Law of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, in collaboration with the Near-Earth Object radar team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goldstone Observatory in California. Observations continued through Thursday morning.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Asteroid 1998 QE2, a space rock big enough to wipe out civilization, sailed past our planet harmlessly on Friday — but not before stirring up attention at the White House and around the world.

There was never any chance that QE2 could hurt us. The closest it ever got was 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers) at 4:59 p.m. ET. That's 15 times farther away than the distance between Earth and the moon. "Its next pass, on July 12, 2028, will be at a very safe 45 million miles (73 mil km)," NASA said in a Twitter tweet giving the all-clear.

Even though this particular asteroid posed no threat, the fact that it's big enough and close enough to see through backyard telescopes captured the world's interest.

QE2's diameter of 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) makes it nine times the length of the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner (which it is not named after). That's big enough to create a civilization-ending catastrophe if it were to hit Earth.

Even its moon, discovered in radar imagery just this week, is formidable: It's 2,000 feet (600 meters) wide. In a worst-case scenario, a collision would devastate your typical statewide area and throw the world into chaos.

Gathering the geeks
The White House used Friday's flyby as a teachable moment to talk about the potential threat posed by asteroids, as well as the potential for scientific discovery and economic exploitation. White House spokesman Josh Earnest was even asked about 1998 QE2 during Friday's regular news briefing.

"Scientists have concluded that the asteroid poses no threat to planet Earth," Earnest told reporters. "I never really thought I'd be standing up here saying that — but I guess I am."

The White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy dwelled on the asteroid issue in greater depth during a "We the Geeks" webcast on Google+.

Among the geeks in attendance were NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver; Bill Nye the Science Guy, who's executive director of the Planetary Society; former NASA astronaut Ed Lu, who is chief executive officer of the B612 Foundation; Peter Diamandis, co-founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources; and Jose Luis Galache, an astronomer at the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center.

Garver pointed out that NASA has quintupled its budget for asteroid detection over the past few years, to an annual level of $20 million. And in the wake of February's spectacular asteroid blast over Russia, the Obama administration has proposed boosting that figure to more than $40 million.

Meanwhile, the B612 Foundation is working to get its Sentinel Space Telescope launched as early as 2017. Lu said the infrared-sensitive telescope could spot as many as 200,000 near-Earth asteroids in the first year of operation. That will make it easier to spot potentially hazardous asteroids in time to turn them aside. "We are turning science fiction into science fact," Lu said.

Diamandis stressed that there's a bright side as well as a dark side to asteroids. Planetary Resources is developing its own fleet of space telescopes to scout out asteroids with the potential of yielding trillions of dollars' worth of resources. "We're having a blast — that's not a good term — we're having fun, and hopefully becoming part of the economy between NASA, B612 and others to help humanity explore, and exploit, and protect."

Seeing it online
Slooh Space Camera shared real-time images of 1998 QE2 from a telescope in the Canary Islands, via its website as well as its iPad app. The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0, based in Italy, also offered a flyby webcast.

If you have a respectable telescope, you can see the asteroid yourself on Friday night. For viewing tips, consult David Dickinson's guide on Universe Today.

NASA's Deep Space Antenna at Goldstone, Calif., is watching the asteroid on Friday night as well. "We will manage to get a little bit better resolution," said Marina Brozovic, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is leading the radar observation campaign. The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico will join the campaign on June 6, when 1998 QE2 comes into its field of view.

Brozovic told NBC News that the discovery of 1998 QE2's moon was a surprise — but a welcome surprise, because close observation of the sizes and orbital movements of the two bodies will allow astronomers to calculate their masses and densities. Based on previous asteroid obervations, experts assume that "these objects are rubble piles," Brozovic said. The current radar campaign could determine that with greater certainty.

Will more revelations turn up over the next couple of weeks? Stay tuned ... and in the meantime, take a look at this hourlong program about 1998 QE2 that aired on NASA TV on Thursday:

More about asteroids:

• TODAY video: Asteroid (with moon) is flying by
• Radar reveals that 1998 QE2 has a moon
• QE2 generates wave of attention
• Cosmic Log archive on asteroids

For more asteroid updates, follow NASA's @AsteroidWatch on Twitter, or look for the hashtags #asteroidQE2 or #1998QE2.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Fri May 31, 2013 1:51 PM EDT

When astronomers analyzed radar readings to create their first maps of 1998 QE2, the big asteroid that's due to sail past Earth on Friday, they were surprised to find that it has a moon twice as big as an ocean liner.

1998 QE2 itself is way bigger: The latest readings from NASA's Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif., are consistent with earlier estimates that the asteroid is about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers wide). But the moon is hefty as well. Astronomers estimate its diameter at 2,000 feet (600 meters). That's big enough to wipe out an area of the size of Virginia if it were to strike land.

Fortunately, neither space rock will come any closer than 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon, during a flyby that reaches its climax at 4:59 p.m. ET Friday.

Even though Earth is in no danger, the close encounter is stirring up interest because it gives astronomers a rare opportunity to see an asteroid up close. Such observations could help NASA plan for efforts as the Osiris-Rex mission, which will bring back a sample from the asteroid Bennu in 2023; and an even more ambitious mission to corral an asteroid by the mid-2020s.

Goldstone's first radar observations of 1998 QE2 were made on Wednesday evening, producing images with a resolution of about 250 feet (75 meters) per pixel. The pictures show that QE2 has a rotation period of less than four hours, and is marked by several dark surface features that are suggestive of large craters. In an image advisory, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says that the image resolution will get better as more radar readings become available, from Goldstone as well as the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

More about the close encounter:

• 1998 QE2's flyby generates online buzz
• It's bigger than an ocean liner and flying past us
• Cosmic Log archive on asteroids

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Asteroid 1998 QE2, a space rock more than nine times as long as the QE2 ocean liner, is due to sail past Earth on Friday — generating a huge wave of observations and online commentary.

The 1.7-mile-wide (2.7-kilometer-wide) near-Earth asteroid won't pose any threat to our planet: Its orbit will bring it no closer than 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers) at 4:59 p.m. ET. Nevertheless, it's sparking interest because it's big enough, and coming close enough, to serve as a valuable target for scientific study.

1998 QE2's passage is also stoking public interest because it's coming just three and a half months after a much smaller asteroid broke apart spectacularly over Russia. NASA and the White House are using Friday's event to turn the spotlight on planetary science as well as the space agency's plans to fend off potential cosmic threats and send astronauts to snag an asteroid in the 2020s.

"Let’s find the asteroids before they find us, and in the process learn more about the secrets of the solar system and other potential opportunities these space rocks present," Phil Larson, a policy adviser for space and aeronautics at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in a blog posting.

The teachable moments begin Thursday. Here's what's you can look forward to:

See the asteroid on video: NASA Administrator Charles Bolden joins experts from JPL and the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in a video presentation that features live telescope images of 1998 QE2. You can watch the hourlong show starting at 1:30 p.m. ET Thursday on NASA Television, or on Ustream.tv with live chat capability. Tweet your questions to @AsteroidWatch.

Chat about the asteroid: Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama hosts an online chat from 8 to 10 p.m. ET Thursday.

White House gathers the geeks: The White House is hosting a "We the Geeks" Google+ Hangout about asteroids at 2 p.m. ET Friday, with OSTP's Cristin Dorgelo serving as moderator. Video guests include NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver; Bill Nye the Science Guy (who is executive director of the Planetary Society); former astronaut Ed Lu, who heads the B612 Foundation and its effort to build an asteroid-hunting space telescope; Peter Diamandis, who wants to turn asteroids into riches as co-founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources; and Jose Luis Galache, an astronomer at the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center. The Hangout can be watched via the White House Google+ page. Tweet questions using the hashtag #WetheGeeks, or post them as comments on the Google+ page.

Train a telescope on it: Even at its closest, 1998 QE2 is too dim to see with the naked eye or binoculars. Its maximum visual brightness is expected to reach 11th magnitude, which could be within the range of respectable telescopes. Local midnight is the best time to look for the asteroid, but you have to know exactly where to look. David Dickinson provides plenty of guidance on the Universe Today website.

Slooh Space Camera

A May 28 image from the Slooh Space Camera Online Telescope shows 1998 QE2 in the center of the frame. Background stars show up as streaks because the telescope was moving to keep its focus on the asteroid.

Watch it online: Slooh Space Camera has scheduled an online viewing party starting at 4:30 p.m. ET Friday, which is a half-hour before the time of closest approach. A telescope set-up in the Canary Islands will deliver imagery of 1998 QE2 out via Slooh's website as well as its iPad app.

Watch for asteroid updates: It looks as if #asteroidQE2 and #1998QE2 are the favored hashtags for updates about the space rock's flyby. You'll also want to keep an eye on NASA's Asteroid Watch website and JPL's Facebook page. Even though the closest approach comes on Friday, radar astronomers will be observing 1998 QE2 through June 9 using NASA's 230-foot-wide (70-meter-wide) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., as well as the 1,000-foot-wide (305-meter-wide) Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The radar imagery will be key to determining 1998 QE2's size and shape with greater accuracy, and you can expect NASA to share that imagery in the weeks ahead.

And about that name ...  1998 QE2 wasn't named after the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner. Instead, it follows the naming system used by the IAU for asteroids. The object was discovered on Aug. 19, 1998, by MIT's Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research program in New Mexico, also known as LINEAR. The "1998" in the provisional name denotes the year of discovery. The "Q" means it was discovered during the latter half of August. The "E2" is a code given to the 55th object discovered during the half-month. Wikipedia explains the system in greater depth. Eventually, LINEAR could propose a less wonky name for approval by the IAU. But there's no rush: The next time 1998 QE2 is due to come this close is in the year 2221.

More about asteroids:

• Radar reveals that 1998 QE2 has a moon
• It's bigger than an ocean liner and flying past Earth
• Cosmic Log archive on asteroids

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log pageto your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA

Pit stop, the moon! Lunar extraction of minerals and ice are envisioned as near-term objectives for space mining advocates

By Mike Wall
Space.com

Human exploration of deep space is looking more and more like a tag-team affair, with NASA jetting off to asteroids and Mars while the private sector sets up shop on the moon.

While NASA has no plans to return humans to the lunar surface anytime soon, private industry is eyeing  Earth's nearest neighbor intently, said Robert Bigelow, the founder and president of Bigelow Aerospace.

"The brass ring for us is having a lunar base — as a company and in conjunction with other companies, and even other, possibly, foreign entities as well," Bigelow said during a teleconference with reporters Thursday. "That is an appetite and a desire that we've had for a long, long time." [3-D-Printing a Future Moon Base (Gallery)]

Two months ago, NASA tapped Bigelow Aerospace to sound out the private sector's interest and intent in going beyond low-Earth orbit, in an attempt to help map out possible public-private partnerships in deep space.

The Space Act agreement set out a two-phase study approach. Bigelow delivered a draft report of the Phase 1 findings Thursday to NASA human exploration chief Bill Gerstenmaier, who also participated in the teleconference.

Bigelow Aerospace

Space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow (left) discusses layout plans of the company's lunar base with Eric Haakonstad, one of Bigelow Aerospace's lead engineers.

Bigelow Aerospace makes expandable habitat modules designed to house astronauts in space or on the surface of the moon and other bodies. The company has long been an advocate of setting up manned lunar bases, and Bigelow said other firms see the appeal of commercial lunar operations as well.

Golden Spike, for example, aims to begin launching two-person missions to the lunar surface and back by 2020. And several different firms, such as Shackleton Energy Co. and Moon Express, plan to mine the moon's resources.

NASA had been planning on sending astronauts back to the moon until 2010, when President Barack Obama directed the space agency to work instead toward getting to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s.

Gerstenmaier said NASA welcomes private industry's interest in the moon, viewing it as a complement to the agency's plans in deeper space.

"NASA and the government, we focus on maybe deep space, we focus on asteroids. The private sector picks up the lunar activity, and then we'll combine and share with them to see what makes sense," Gerstenmaier said.

"Transportation to the same region is common between us," he added. "Other aspects — life-support — are common between us. We can do lots of co-development between these that actually share what the private sector needs and what the government needs."

Cosmic Log: To the moon? Private exploration studied

Bigelow said he talked to about 20 private companies during the course of the study, including major players such as SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corp.

"You would recognize most of the names," he said.

Gerstenmaier said NASA would release the Phase 1 report to the public after the agency receives the final draft. The Phase 2 portion of the study, meanwhile, is slated to last four months.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

• Wildest Private Deep-Space Mission Ideas: A Countdown
• Why Go Back To The Moon? Retracing The Last Footsteps | Video
• Moon Master: An Easy Quiz for Lunatics

Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

NASA via Planetary Society

An artist's conception shows the Osiris-Rex spacecraft's path to and from the asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft's aim is to bring up to 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) of material from the asteroid back to Earth.

By Mike Wall, Space.com 

A near-Earth asteroid that will be visited by a NASA spacecraft in 2018 now has a more approachable name — "Bennu" — thanks to a North Carolina third-grader.

Nine-year-old Michael Puzio's suggestion beat out more than 8,000 other entries in an international student contest that sought to rename potentially dangerous asteroid (101955) 1999 RQ36, which is the target of NASA's Osiris-Rex sample-return mission.

"It's great!" Puzio said when told he won the contest. "I'm the first kid I know that named part of the solar system!"[NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroid Mission in Pictures]

Bennu (pronounced ben-oo) is an Egyptian god usually depicted as a gray heron. Puzio nominated the name because he thought Osiris-Rex's Touch-and-Go Sample Mechanism arm (TAGSAM) and solar panels looked like Bennu's neck and wings, contest officials said.

"The name 'Bennu' struck a chord with many of us right away," Bruce Betts, director of projects for the nonprofit Planetary Society and a judge in the competition, said in a statement. "While there were many great entries, the similarity between the image of the heron and the TAGSAM arm of Osiris-Rex was a clever choice."

The $800 million Osiris-Rex mission — whose name is short for Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer — is slated to blast off in September 2016, rendezvous with the 1,840-foot-wide (560-meter-wide) Bennu in 2018 and return pieces of the space rock to Earth in 2023.

Planetary Society

Nine-year-old Michael Puzio says he's the "first kid I know that named part of the solar system."

Scientists are eager to study such samples for several reasons. Asteroids are composed of primitive material left over from the formation of the solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago, for example, and they may have helped life gain a foothold on Earth by delivering water and complex, carbon-rich molecules to our planet.

"The samples of Bennu returned by Osiris-Rex will allow scientists to peer into the origin of the solar system and gain insights into the origin of life,” Jason Dworkin, an Osiris-Rex project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement.

Bennu is also a potentially hazardous asteroid that has a roughly 1-in-1,000 chance of hitting Earth in 2182, so a detailed study of the space rock could come in handy if humanity ever needs to deflect it or similar space rocks, researchers say.

The "Name that Asteroid!" competition launched last year. It was a partnership involving the University of Arizona, where Osiris-Rex principal investigator Dante Lauretta works; the Planetary Society; and the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory.

Contestants, who had to be younger than 18, submitted a name along with a short explanation for their choice. More than 8,000 students from more than 25 countries around the world participated, contest officials said.

"Bennu" will be submitted to the International Astronomical Union, which traditionally has approved official astronomical names for celestial bodies, they added.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

• Asteroid Basics: A Space Rock Quiz
• How NASA's Asteroid Sample Return Mission Will Work (Infographic)
• Why Retrieve Samples From Asteroids? | Video

Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

By Mike Wall
Space.com

A billionaire-backed asteroid-mining company aims to start putting its big plans into action soon, launching its first hardware into space by this time next year.

Planetary Resources, which counts Google execs Larry Page and Eric Schmidt among its investors, plans to loft a set of tiny "cubesats" to Earth orbit in early 2014, to test out gear for its first line of asteroid-prospecting spacecraft.

"Our belief and our philosophy is that the best test bed is space itself," Chris Voorhees, Planetary Resources' vice president of spacecraft development, said Wednesday during a Google+ Hangout. [Planetary Resources' Asteroid-Mining Plans]

"Despite the fact that we're a deep-space company, we're going to use Earth orbit as much as possible," Voorhees added. "For us, it's a valuable learning experience, and that's what we plan on doing one year hence."

The test bed slated for launch in 2014 is made up of three "cubesats," measuring 12 inches long by 4 inches wide by 4 inches tall (30 by 10 by 10 centimeters), company officials said. The Arkyd-3 satellite will test out technologies for Planetary Resources' Arkyd-100 scouts, which the firm hopes to launch to low-Earth orbit on asteroid-hunting missions in 2015.

The Arkyd-3 "is the testbed manifestation of our Arkyd-100 spacecraft. It just happens to be flying," Voorhees said.

A series of other robotic probes beyond the 33-pound (15-kilogram) Arkyd-100 will investigate near-Earth asteroids up close, eventually mining suitable ones for resources such as water and precious metals. Water is the key focus at first, because it is the key enabler of off-Earth living, Planetary Resources officials said.

Water can keep astronauts hydrated, and serve as a shield against dangerous radiation. Split into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, it can also provide breathable air and rocket fuel, allowing voyaging spaceships to fill up on the go.

Sourcing water in space will make space travel much cheaper and more efficient, Planetary Resources President Chris Lewicki said. He noted that it currently costs about $10,000 to launch 1 liter (0.26 gallons) of water to low-Earth orbit.

"Water is the gateway drug of space. It's the enabler — in a good way, though," Lewicki said.

Planetary Resources held Wednesday's Google+ Hangout partly to mark the one-year anniversary of the company's public unveiling. After Planetary Resources announced its existence and intentions last year, another asteroid-mining firm called Deep Space Industries made its presence known as well.

Both companies hope their activities help spur humanity's push out into the solar system, officials have said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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Planetary Resources

An artist's conception shows how solar energy could be used to process material on a near-Earth asteroid.

Experts on near-Earth objects wondered whether February's meteor blast over Russia would serve as a wakeup call about asteroids — and two months later, there's ample evidence that it has. But there are two sides to that wakeup call, having to do with potential opportunities as well as potential threats.

Nothing illustrates that better than this week's developments: In Flagstaff, Ariz., researchers are discussing ways to detect, track and head off space rocks that could wreak destruction on Earth. In Pasadena, Calif., NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that an infrared sensor for tracking asteroids and comets has passed a critical design test. And in Bellevue, Wash., the Planetary Resources space mining venture says it's partnering with the Bechtel construction company on future efforts to mine asteroids for raw materials.

"Bechtel has a history of consistently tackling the most challenging projects, beginning with the construction of the Hoover Dam more than 75 years ago," Peter Diamandis, the co-founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources, said in a news release announcing the deal. Today, California-based Bechtel is one of the world's leaders in the engineering, procurement and construction industry. It will join Planetary Resources' billionaire-heavy list of investors — and assist the company in its long-term mission to mine near-Earth asteroids for precious metals and outer-space water.

Diamandis and his fellow co-founder, Eric Anderson, have said asteroid mining could turn into a multitrillion-dollar industry if their vision becomes reality.

"Planetary Resources' mission is ambitious, but they've assembled a world-class team to succeed," Riley Bechtel, the chairman and CEO of Bechtel, said in the news release. "Our companies share a common vision to continually innovate and push boundaries, all aimed at contributing a better quality of life."

Speaking of life, Planetary Resources' president, Chris Lewicki, is among the scores of experts attending this week's Planetary Defense Conference in Flagstaff. "It's always an extremely fun and informative conference, as it focuses entirely on asteroids ... how often do you get to consider defending the Earth from space rocks?" he wrote in a blog posting on Tuesday.

NASA's proposed mission to grab an asteroid and park it near the moon by 2021 has been one of the meeting's major topics, but the gathering also provided the latest information on the threats posed by near-Earth objects, and what to do about them:

• Experts estimate that there are 9 million near-Earth asteroids as large as the 17-meter-wide (55-foot-wide) space rock that broke apart over Russia on Feb. 15, and virtually all of them are too small to track using current observational tools. So far, detection systems have found less than 1 percent of the asteroids smaller than 100 meters (which is big enough to wipe out a city).
• Lewicki passed along word of a scientific study suggesting that even "rubble-pile" asteroids can become more cohesive over time, thanks to the forces that bind together the smallest grains in their size distrbutions.
• Several schemes for fending off dangerous asteroids were presented — including plans to deflect them with impact vehicles, divert them or blast them to smithereens with nuclear bombs, or guide them gently into non-threatening orbits using gravity tractors.

JPL's Shyam Bhaskaran described an "AutoNav" system that could guide an impactor autonomously to hit an asteroid target at speeds of up to 30,000 mph. "It's not that easy," Bhaskaran said in a news release. "Hitting an asteroid with a spacecraft traveling at hypervelocity is like shooting an arrow at a target on a speeding race car."

The conference began on Monday and runs through Friday. Check out the program, feast your eyes on the video coverage (with live streaming as well as archived clips for each session), and follow the action via Twitter with the hashtag #PDC2013.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / B612 Foundation

The artist's concepts for the NEOCam infrared telescope (left) and the Sentinel Space Telescope (right) look similar. Both are designed to scan the skies for near-Earth asteroids.

Infrared eyes
The first step in planetary defense is to find all those potentially threatening asteroids — and during the Flagstaff conference, the spotlight focused on two proposed space telescopes designed to look for space rocks. The B612 Foundation's Sentinel Space Telescope, currently scheduled for launch in 2017 or 2018, would use an infrared sensor to look for Earth-threatening asteroids from a Venus-type orbit. Ball Aerospace reportedly has 25 people working on the Sentinel project, and so far, B612 has raised $2 million of the mission's estimated $450 million cost.

Meanwhile, JPL is working on the components for a future space mission known as NEOCam. Like Sentinel, NEOCam would scan the skies from an outer-space vantage point, looking for the infrared glow of asteroids. The mission is getting technology development funds from NASA's Discovery Program — and on Monday, JPL said NEOCam's infrared sensor passed a design test that assessed its performance under simulated deep-space conditions. A research paper detailing the sensor's design and capabilities is to be published by the Journal of Optical Engineering.

"Infrared sensors are a powerful tool for discovering, cataloging and understanding the asteroid population," JPL researcher Amy Mainzer, a co-author of the paper, said in a news release. "When you observe a space rock with infrared, you are seeing its thermal emissions, which can better define the asteroid's size, as well as tell you something about composition."

Correction for 1:50 p.m. ET April 17: Good news, everyone! The Planetary Defense Conference runs through Friday. The bad news is that I originally wrote Wednesday instead, and that I wrote "#PDC2012" rather than #PDC2013 for the Twitter hashtag. Sorry about that!

More about asteroids:

• Asteroid miners get a boost from NASA
• NASA on asteroid threat: Pay now or pray later
• NBC News archive on asteroids

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Tue Apr 16, 2013 7:54 PM EDT