NASA Talk Looks at Offensive and Defensive Asteroid Game Plans

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Sep 09, 2013, 10:54 ET

HAMPTON, Va., Sept. 9, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Tuesday, Sept. 9, at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., space systems engineer Dan Mazanek will present, "Asteroid Initiative: Overview and Future Direction" at 2 p.m. in the Reid Conference Center.

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NASA recently announced the Asteroid Initiative that includes an increased focus on defending our planet against the threat of asteroid collisions. Mazanek will provide an overview of the initiative and discuss the alternate mission approach that his team is studying.

Mazanek will be available to answer questions from the media during a news briefing at 1:15 p.m. that day. Media who wish to do so should contact Chris Rink at 757-864-6786, or by e-mail at [email protected], by noon on the day of the talk for credentials and entry to the center.

That same evening at 7:30, Mazanek will present a similar program for the general public at the Virginia Air & Space Center in downtown Hampton. This Sigma Series event is free and no reservations are required.

In addition to asteroid collision defense, the initiative has an Asteroid Redirect Mission where a small asteroid is captured and placed into a stable orbit between the earth and the moon. Once in translunar space, astronauts carried onboard the Orion spacecraft would explore the redirected asteroid to achieve a range of NASA science, technology and human exploration goals.

Mazanek is a senior space systems engineer at NASA Langley with over 24 years of experience in space mission formulation, and conceptual design and sizing of human and robotic spacecraft. He was also the Comet/Asteroid Protection System Study lead under NASA's Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts program.

Mazanek is a technical expert in the field of human and robotic missions to small planetary bodies including near-Earth asteroids and the Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos. He graduated with a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering from Virginia Tech in 1989.

For more information about NASA Langley's Colloquium and Sigma Series Lectures, visit:

http://colloqsigma.larc.nasa.gov

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SOURCE NASA