Europeans Are Taking The Asteroid Threat Seriously

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Aug 18, 2011, 4:55:35 PM8/18/11

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Europeans Are Taking The Asteroid Threat Seriously
One recent paper published looked into what sort of instruments would be needed to achieve the goals of the mission. They looked at deflecting two different asteroids; they have different sizes (320 vs. 680 meters in diameter), masses, and orbits as well: one is on a more elliptical orbit making it harder to get to but easier to deflect, and the other on a more circular orbit that’s easier to get to and harder to deflect. This study helps clarify what equipment will need to be built to do all this, and is a great step toward understanding what must be done. Mind you, NASA did something like this back in 2005 with the Deep Impact mission, but there the primary goal wasn’t seeing how much the orbit of a comet was changed after an impactor whacked it, but instead to try to dig up surface material and see what lay beneath.