Europe is looking for money to fund mission against asteroids – The Trade

what may Be a day to divert the path of a asteroid that is heading towards the Earth? US and Europe prepare an experiment in the space to check it, but the europeans do not have sufficient funds.

for years, NASA and the European Space agency (ESA) developed a joint mission named AIDA to check if you can change the course of a asteroid.

The u.s. space agency intends to provoke a collision between a projectile launched from the Earth and the satellite of the asteroid Didymos, and that they will find only 13 million miles from Earth in 2022.

“The goal is to validate a technology that if one day asteroid threatens to enter in collision with the Earth, we are sure to be able to cause an explosion and change its trajectory,” he told the AFP Ian Carnelli, head of the project AIM (Asteroid Impact Mission) in the ESA.

As part of the mission AIDA, the americans planned to send to space in 2020 apparatus 600 kilos, called DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test). Two years later, it should crash, at a speed of 6 km per second, the satellite that measures 160 meters in diameter.

The europeans, for their part, should launch the probe AIM to Didymos (of almost 800 meters of diameter) and its satellite and to study also in 2022 both bodies and take images of the impact. The mission AIM was presented in December at the ministerial Council of the ESA in Lucerne (Switzerland) but was postponed for lack of money.

- ‘Not giving up’ -

THAT called for 250 million euros for AIM. He received the support of several small european countries, especially Luxembourg, but the large remained on the sidelines.

The director general of ESA Jan Woerner, said she was “disappointed” because he is “convinced of the need of the project.”

“The mission has not been aborted,” said Woerner, last week. “Don’t quit, mainly because several member States asked me not to abandon”.

“We are thinking of several solutions, among them a lighter version of AIM”, reducing a bit its scientific content, he explained.

“this could reduce the required budget to less than € 150 million, excluding the launch,” she stated to the AFP Patrick Michel, an astrophysicist at the Observatory of the Côte d’azur and chief scientific officer of AIM.

In its full version, AIM provides a camera, an equipment, a radio, a small lander, minisatellites CubeSats and various radars.

time is of The essence. “We still have two months, more or less, to move on and find the money,” says Carnelli.

“If Europe does not carry out AIM, you will lose all the experience gained with the Rosetta probe in the plane of the navigation near a small celestial body”, warns Michel.

Although THAT throw in the towel, the u.s. mission, DART will be able to move forward due to the collision can be seen from the Earth. Its budget is about $ 150 million.

today, it is considered that more than 1,700 asteroids are potentially hazardous because its trajectory crosses that of the Earth at a distance of less than 10 million kilometers. “You have to keep an eye on them”, stresses Michel.

“If an asteroid of 150 meters, fell on the Earth, this would represent -explains – the equivalent of 10,000 Hiroshima bombs in terms of energy liberated.”

Source: AFP