Scientists Urge Europe to Stick With “Armageddon”-style Asteroid Mission

UniverseToday.com ^ | 22 Sep , 2017 | Matt Williams

[BenLurkin]

This mission would be a first for scientists, and would test the capabilities of space agencies to divert rocks away from Earth’s orbit. NASA’s contribution to this mission is known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the spacecraft which would be responsible for crashing into Didymoon. Plans for this spacecraft recently entered Phase B, having met with approval, but still in need of further development.

The plan was to mount DART on an already planned commercial or military launch, and would then be placed in geosynchronous orbit between December 2020 and May 2021. It would then rely on a NEXT-C ion engine to push itself beyond the Moon and reach an escape point to depart the Earth-Moon system, eventually making its way to Didymos and Didymoon.

Europe’s contribution to the mission was known as the Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM), which would involve sending a small craft close to Didymos to observe the crash and conduct research on the asteroid’s moon. Unfortunately, this aspect of the mission suffered a setback when space ministers from the ESA’s 22 member states rejected a €250 million ($300 million USD) request for funding last December.

However, during the European Planetary Science Congress – which will be taking place from September 17th to 22nd in the Latvian capital of Riga – scientists took the opportunity to advise the mission’s European partners to get back on board. As they emphasized, this mission – which is a dry-run for future asteroid redirect missions – is crucial if space agencies hope to develop the capacity to protect Earth from hazardous NEOs.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BenLurkin. Looks like the ion drive will be used to push the satellite into the asteroidal moon, which will thereby be made to crash into the parent body. Using an ion drive directly attached to an asteroid would be an even better test, because anything that could threaten human survival would have to be taken apart by slamming a pretty large asteroid (probably one that is currently in retrograde orbit around the Sun), via a redirecting of its momentum. For perspective, an object about one mile in diameter would, upon impact on the also-moving Earth, release more energy than the simultaneous explosion of all the world's nuclear arsenals. To put that into some perspective, some nuclear weapons have, by themselves, more energy release than all the conventional armaments used during World War II.

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[BBell]

I’m glad you are back

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!