European space agency joins Nasa for asteroid defence mission
- Nasa and European space agency studying what happens if a spacecraft hits an asteroid
- Aim is to see whether they could alter the course of a large object if it were heading towards Earth
The European space agency (ESA) signed a deal worth €129 million (US$154 million) to make a spacecraft for a joint project with Nasa looking at how to deflect an asteroid heading for Earth.
Nasa is due to launch a spacecraft in June 2021 set on a collision course with the Dimorphos asteroid to test whether it would be possible to nudge objects that might be threatening Earth onto a safer path.
ESA will then launch its spacecraft – named Hera after the Greek goddess of marriage – in October 2024 to map the resulting impact crater and measure the asteroid’s mass, reaching the area in late 2026 for a six-month survey.
Hera, together with the Nasa spacecraft Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART), would be “humankind’s first probe to rendezvous with a binary asteroid system,” a little-explored class that made up around 15 per cent of all known asteroids, ESA noted.
The mission is reminiscent of the 1998 film Armageddon, in which actor Bruce Willis plays a member of a team sent to destroy an asteroid to save Earth.
“We want to try for the first time to steer an asteroid on its potential collision course with Earth,” ESA director Rolf Densing said.