NASA officials hail flyby asteroid’s potential for alternative energy, space exploration

CNN’s Tom Foreman appears as a life-sized speck on top of a hologram of the asteroid that approached Earth today. (TwitPic by @EricWeisbrod)

A three-kilometer wide asteroid called QE2 will hurdle past Earth’s orbit at a close range tonight, but rather than spelling disaster, the deep space object may yield new impetus for space exploration and alternative sources of energy.

Under close scientific observation with radar imagery since it was first identified in 1998, the flyby binary asteroid, which consists of two rock masses orbiting each other, is the first the Earth-Moon system has seen in decades. As Obama’s new budget boosts NASA funding for asteroid detection and mitigation, experts participating in a White House Google+ Hangout today described their hope that QE2 might be captured, sampled and mined for resources. QE2 contains about one trillion liters of water and a substance called cabonaceous chondrite, which could be used as fuel to power future space missions in an economically viable way.

“The only thing that has driven humanity to explore the world in the last hundred years is looking for resources,” said Peter Diamandis, co-founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources, during the Google+ Hangout. “If we had an economic engine, it would allow us to explore space in a vibrant and consistent fashion.”

Asteroids might be able to bring space exploration and settlement out of the realm of science fiction.

Water and mineral-rich asteroids, referred to as “dirty ice,” could be used to sustain astronauts or converted into rocket biofuel for missions to planets such as Mars. The rock bodies could also be mined for metals – just one 500-meter wide asteroid could contain all of the platinum-group metals ever mined on Earth.

Planetary Resources is one of several recent start-ups that aim to exploit asteroid resources.

The asteroid will fly by at about 15 times the distance of the Earth from the Moon. But while QE2 poses no threat to Earth, experts said the danger of asteroid impacts remains a top priority for researchers. Jose Luis Galache, an astronomer at the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center said an asteroid impact has about 20 to 50 times the force of the rock’s weight, meaning that sizable objects could wipe out entire cities.

NASA identifies about 500 asteroids annually, but approximately one million potentially hazardous asteroids exist. In order to increase planetary defense, experts said scientists need to be able to identify about 100,000 asteroids annually, which would only be feasible with improved technologies.

Lori Garver, deputy administrator of NASA, said samples from the asteroid could also help scientists understand the origins of life, since they believe that the mineral-rich rock masses may have housed the first traces of living organisms.

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