Smash It on Purpose
It’s like a video game in the sky: A joint mission between Europe and the US plans to slam a spacecraft into an asteroid in order to prove that incoming space rocks can be knocked off their paths before they collide with Earth.
The Asteroid impact and Deflection Assessment mission (AIDA) will intercept the asteroid Didymos in 2022, when it is about 6.5 million miles from impacting us. Didymos is a binary system, with an 800 meter wide asteroid and a smaller 150 meter space rock orbiting each other. It does not pose a threat in the foreseeable future, so it’s OK if we miss.
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