What wrong with using astoroids?

Question

We could put a telescope on a astoroid or commet and use its natural orbit to explore the solar system. Is there something wrong with that or is it that oneone ever thought of it before?

Answer 1

The way space flight works, if you can land on a comet then you have already used as much rocket power as you would need to go anywhere the comet goes anyway. In other words, you don't save any fuel by landing. Not a drop.

Basically, to land softly on a comet or asteroid, you have to match its orbit, and if your space craft has matched its orbit, then you would naturally follow it everywhere it went without ever landing and without ever using one more drop of fuel. So you don't even need to land, and if you don't need to land then you don't need the comet to even be there. You could just put the space craft in any orbit you like and not care if there is a comet in that same orbit or not. This is in fact what is done with every interplanetary space craft.

Answer 2

Besides not being economically viable or interesting as campbelp2002 pointed out, it would be completely pointless for a telescope to be grounded on an asteroid due to some other implications:

1 - Life Span - it (the telescope) wouldn't be able to go to far (with the current technology) without having its communication signal weakened proportionally to its distance from us;

2 - practicability - An asteroid is constantly bombarded by cosmic debris/smaller asteroids - some as small as dust particles but with impacts strong enough to make nice cracks ours space shuttles' windows/walls for example - let alone our hypothetical telescope . That would be therefore an hostile environment for a telescope - even more than around our globe among all the space junk we've got orbiting it;

3 - It would be eclipsed momentarily every now and then thanks to the asteroid's rotation which would prove solar powering and communication blind spots an issue.

4 - Malleability - It would be limited to the side of the asteroid where it is set. Not such a thing like Hubble which can be pointed out to whichever direction there's something nearly instantly, only limited to its orbit around the Earth - remember the Shoe-Maker Levy comet's impact on Jupiter?

If we could overcome the main issue which is signal weakening, it'd be much more interesting having spacecrafts like the Voyagers still sending us clear images from the immense distance they are now and beyond. That surely would be worth a look!

Answer 3

1. Asteroids move very fast in orbits completely different than the earth. That means it takes HUGE amounts of fuel to get there.
2. Surface isn't exacly strong. Asteroids are piles of debris held together by the loosest of gravety. You can't secure something on them.
3. When sunlight hits asteroids, the surface evaporates. How is your delicate telescope going to survive being bombarded by debris?
4. How will your telescope, on an asteroid going all over the solar system, sometimes near, mostly FAR (like as far as Jupiter or further), sometimes behind the sun, going to communicate with the earth? At a distance of Jupiter it can only send a few kilobits to earth. Not enough for high resolution images.
5. How is it going to point its antenna to earth? Asteroids spin!

Answer 4

Yes, because the natural orbit of a comet and asteroids is many decades. We are able to get pretty much where we need to go in the solar system between years and a decade so it would not be advantageous for us to even attempt such a thing. Not to mention the fact that a comets surface ever time it would approach the sun becomes extremely volatile emitting huge amounts of gases and debris.

Answer 5

Asteroids have very irregular shapes and orbit patterns. They have a bad habit of crashing into planets, moons, or each other. Getting a probe to successfully land on an asteroid and install a correctly calibrated telescope would be science fiction (right now at least) at best.

Answer 6

At present we can not fly as fast as a comet would be traveling to land in it in one piece. Near the sun a comet is possible traveling 150,000 mph. We have put a satellite in front of one and crashed them together.

Answer 7

They not only are in a fixed orbit, but they rotate. You want a fixed reference position for a scope. Not one that rotates every 5 minutes.

Answer 8

The problem is similar with that which mice have encountered in carrying out their project to put a bell on the neck of the cat...Will you do that for all of us ?