EROs: a New Class of 12 New Asteroids Which Are Easy to Retrieve

Asteroids that pass close to Earth have become the focus of increased attention in recent years, partly because of the potential threat they pose to humanity.

But they are also a potential boon. For decades, science fiction writers and various space scientists have pointed out that asteroids offer a huge untapped source of valuable resources. Bringing just a small portion of this back to Earth could be a game changer for our planet.

And even if this stuff is too expensive to bring home, it could provide the raw materials for rocket fuel and perhaps even rockets themselves to be manufactured in space. Many visionaries have greedily eyed these resources in the hope that a new gold rush is just around the corner.

Indeed last year, a company called Planetary Resources, funded by a high profile list of investors including Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt and space entrepreneur Richard Branson, announced its intention to begin mining asteroids as soon as is feasible.

So finding target asteroids is hugely important. That’s why Daniel Garcia Yarnoz and a few pals at the University of Strathclyde in the UK today describe an entirely new category of asteroid that is easy to capture.

These guys have searched through the current database of around 9000 near-Earth objects looking for those that could be manoeuvred into an accessible orbit by changing their velocity by less than 500 metres per second.

By accessible orbit, these guys mean an orbit around the L1 or L2 Lagrangian points where the gravitational force of the Sun and Earth exactly balance. These points are around a million kilometres or so from Earth.

Garcia Yarnoz and co conclude that 12 asteroids meet this criteria. They call this new class of asteroid “Easily Retreivable Objects” or EROs and they make an interesting group.

The teams says that one of these asteroids with a diameter of between 2 and 7 metres and known as 2006 RH120, could be sent into orbit around L2 be changing its velocity by just 58 metres per second. They calculate that this could be done with a single burn on 1 February 2021 and would take just 5 years to reach its destination.

In fact, they point out that with a low thrust engine with a specific impulse of 3000s, it ought to be possible to move some 1500 tons into orbit.