NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) teams are meeting in Rome next week to discuss progress on the Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment, a joint research mission to study the viability of diverting an asteroid by crashing a spacecraft into its surface.
About:
The project aims to deflect the orbit of one of the two Didymos asteroids between Earth and Mars, with an observer craft gauging the effect of the impact more effectively than ground-based observers could manage.
Project Components:
NASA will provide the collider, the Double Asteroid Impact Test (DART). It should launch in summer 2021 and will smack into the smaller of the two Didymos asteroids at about 14,764MPH.
An Italian cubesat, LICIACube, will study the moment of impact.
After that, the ESA will launch a Hera probe in October 2024 to study the target asteroid, including the impact crater, mass and a radar probe (the first ever for an asteroid). Hera will take roughly two years to arrive.
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