The Art Neuro Weblog

Apocalypse When?
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 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.

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.
As usual the damn project costs money and they're looking for money.

- Art Neuro