Finding Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) Destinations for Human Exploration: Implications for Astrobiology

The space between the Sun, Earth, and Mars swarms with near-Earth asteroids and comets. These objects represent the leftover building blocks of early Solar System formation and contain information crucial to understand the processes that influenced planetary accretion and the origins of life. These primitive objects are also some of the most easily accessible bodies in interplanetary space for robotic and human exploration. However, the current number of catalogued near-Earth objects represents just a small percentage of the estimated population that is projected to exist within near-Earth space. In order to plan for affordable future human space flight (HSF) opportunities, a more complete set of human-accessible near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) with well-known orbits must be obtained. The critical first step towards the goal of mounting piloted missions to NEAs is to complete a near-Earth object (NEO) survey using a space-based asset (or assets) that is more effective in discovering additional NEAs than existing ground-based systems.