Arkansas researcher to join search for asteroids

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) _ Professor Derek Sears has a mission that's out of this world. <br><br>The University of Arkansas researcher is putting together a team of scientists to help bring asteroid

Sunday, December 24th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) _ Professor Derek Sears has a mission that's out of this world.

The University of Arkansas researcher is putting together a team of scientists to help bring asteroid samples to Earth.

Sears, a chemistry professor and director of the Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences, has proposed a mission that will visit three near-Earth asteroids, obtain samples and return those samples to Earth.

The project is called Hera, named for a Greek goddess and mother of the three graces: joyfulness, bloom and brightness. The Arkansas-Oklahoma center will provide infrastructure and support for the mission.

This all comes on the heels of NASA's successful Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous space mission. Sears said NEAR's success helped make a mission like his possible. There are also new engines for driving interplanetary spacecraft, and 1,000 or more near-Earth asteroids have been discovered in the past two years.

``We have the right engines, another space craft doing a dry run, and we have plenty of targets,'' Sears said.

Plans call for the spacecraft to include a device that hovers above asteroids and extends a high-speed drill into their surface. The probe would capture fragments and store them aboard the spacecraft. The craft also would contain cameras, spectrometers and other scientific equipment to record information about the asteroids.

Sears and his colleagues recently gathered at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston to discuss the mission. They talked about how the mission could help experts derail asteroids headed for Earth and its usefulness in future space exploration and development.

The mission would address some fundamental science questions NASA wants answered. Hera could help gather data on how solar systems formed, how stars evolved, what's needed to sustain life on Earth and the possibility of life on other planets.

Researchers at NASA's Glenn Research Center determined the mission's itinerary. Hera would launch in January 2006, reaching the first asteroid after eight months and spending about 99 days at the first two asteroids. It would then spend 205 days at the third, returning to Earth in November 2010.