In the recent round to select new missions, one that got up was a project to slam something into an asteroid to try and deflect its course.
The slam-bang Don Quixote mission would help scientists figure out how to deflect or destroy any asteroid in the future that might be found to be on a collision course with Earth. The project uses the Spanish spelling of Don Quixote, the protagonist in Cervantes' novel who has chivalrous ideas that tend toward the impractical.The mission involves launching 2 craft - Sancho and Hidalgo - and slamming them into a designated asteroid of about 500m diameter. Sounds like the sort of fun I'd get a kick out of. A kind of contact hitting with 2 strikes, swinging in space, so to speak.
The lofty modern-day Don Quixote would help solve a practical problem.
Scientists don't know enough about asteroid insides to predict how one would respond to attempts to nudge it off an Earth-impact course or turn it into harmless dust. While no asteroids are currently known to be on track to hit the planet, experts say a regional catastrophe is inevitable in the very long run, over millennia. And run-ins with small asteroids that could incinerate a large city occur ever few thousand years.
"We want to investigate the internal structure of an asteroid, and at the same time develop and test the technology necessary, in a worst case scenario, to deflect a sizeable asteroid," says Andrea Milani, an asteroid expert at the University of Pisa who is helping to plan the mission.
As usual the damn project costs money and they're looking for money.
- Art Neuro
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