“Asteroid Impact And Deflection Assessment (AIDA) Mission: Science Return And Technology Demonstration”
Summary
AIDA is a joint ESA-NASA cooperative project, which includes the ESA Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) rendezvous spacecraft and the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. The AIM study entered Phase A/B1 at ESA (in the technology department) in early 2015 and will proceed through summer 2016. The DART study should enter NASA Phase A in late summer 2015 and will also proceed through summer 2016. The primary goals of AIDA are (i) to investigate the binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos, including its subsurface and internal properties, (ii) to test our ability to impact its moon by an hypervelocity projectile in 2022 and (iii) to measure and characterize the deflection caused by the impact both from space with AIM and from ground based observatories. AIDA will thus be the first well documented impact experiment on a small (170 m) asteroid, including both the detailed characterization of the target, as well as the impact conditions and outcome. I will present the current status of the mission study, as well as its science and technological objectives, and what we expect regarding the impact outcome based on simulations.
The presentation can be seen here.
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