It's terrifying to think about, but if an asteroid were hurtling toward Earth right now, we couldn't do much to stop it from smacking us in the face.
Knowing this, the European Space Agency (ESA), with help from NASA, plans to blow up an asteroid as a training mission to ensure Earth can defend against dangerous asteroids in the future.
The project, dubbed the Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM), will hopefully give researchers a better insight into how we can explore deep space as well as protect ourselves from threats. According to Phys.Org:
Launched in October 2020, AIM will travel to a binary asteroid system – the paired Didymos asteroids, which will come a comparatively close 11 million kilometers to Earth in 2022. The 800 meter-diameter main body is orbited by a 170 meter moon, informally called 'Didymoon'.
AIM will then land on one of the smaller asteroids to gather information. After this initial intelligence gathering, the team will go into the next stage of the mission: killing the asteroid. As Phys.Org reports:
AIM is also Europe's contribution to the larger Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment mission: AIDA. In late 2022, the NASA-led part of AIDA will arrive: the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, probe will approach the binary system–then crash straight into the asteroid moon at about 6 kilometers per second.
The impact will enable researchers to better understand how asteroids are affected by such maneuvers. It will also mark the first time that humans have directly altered the Solar System.
Hopefully, NASA will never have to use the knowledge gathered during the mission. Although, having the capability to deflect or destroy asteroids that could otherwise destroy entire cities and drastically affect the climate is definitely a good contingency plan to have on paper.
(h/t Phys.Org)
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