Asteroid Impact & deflection Assessment, an Innovative Small Satellite Mission
- Paper number
IAC-14,A3,4,9,x21929
- Author
Dr. Andy Cheng, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, United States
- Coauthor
Dr. Patrick Michel, University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, CNRS, Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur, France
- Coauthor
Dr. Stephan Ulamec, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), Germany
- Coauthor
Mr. Andres Galvez, European Space Agency (ESA), France
- Coauthor
Mr. Ian Carnelli, European Space Agency (ESA), France
- Coauthor
Ms. Cheryl Reed, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, United States
- Year
2014
- Abstract
On Feb. 15, 2013, an exceptionally close approach to Earth by the small asteroid 2012 DA14 was eagerly awaited by observers, but another small asteroid impacted Earth over Chelyabinsk, Russia the same day without warning, releasing several hundred kilotons TNT of energy and injuring over 1500 people. These dramatic events remind us of the needs to discover hazardous asteroids and to learn how to mitigate them. The AIDA mission is the first demonstration of a mitigation technique to protect the Earth from a potential asteroid impact, by performing a spacecraft kinetic impact on an asteroid to deflect it from its trajectory. We will provide an update on the status of parallel AIDA mission studies supported by ESA and NASA. AIDA is an international collaboration consisting of two independent but mutually supporting missions, one of which is the asteroid kinetic impactor and the other is the characterization spacecraft which will orbit the asteroid system to monitor the deflection experiment and measure the results. These two missions are the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which is the kinetic impactor, and the European Space Agency's Asteroid Impact Monitoring (AIM) mission, which is the characterization spacecraft. The target of the AIDA mission will be a binary asteroid, in which DART will target the secondary, smaller member in order to deflect the binary orbit. The resulting period change can be measured to within 10% by ground-based observations. The asteroid deflection will be measured to higher accuracy, and additional results of the DART impact, like the impact crater, will be studied in great detail by the AIM mission. AIDA will return vital data to determine the momentum transfer efficiency of the kinetic impact and key physical properties of the target asteroid. The two mission components of AIDA, DART and AIM, are each independently valuable, but when combined they provide a greatly increased knowledge return. The AIDA mission will combine US and European space experience and expertise to address an international problem, the asteroid impact hazard. AIDA will also be a valuable precursor to human spaceflight to an asteroid and will return fundamental new science data on surface properties and interior structure. AIDA will target the binary Near-Earth asteroid Didymos with two independently launched spacecraft, with the deflection experiment to occur in October, 2022.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
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