{"id":229286,"date":"2015-05-20T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-20T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"fa5b486a15d3a99c6ffb74182d8786f2"},"modified":"2015-05-20T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-20T22:00:00","slug":"asteroid-impact-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=229286","title":{"rendered":"Asteroid Impact Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/videos\/2015\/04\/asteroid_impact_mission\/15361020-1-eng-GB\/Asteroid_Impact_Mission_small.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"96\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"8\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nThe Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) is a candidate mission currently undergoing preliminary design work.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nLaunched in October 2020, AIM would travel to a binary asteroid system \u2013 the paired Didymos asteroids, which will come a comparatively close 11 million km to Earth in 2022. The 800 m-diameter main body is orbited by a 170 m moon, informally called \u2018Didymoon\u2019.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThis smaller body is AIM\u2019s focus: the spacecraft would perform high-resolution visual, thermal and radar mapping of the moon to build detailed maps of its surface and interior structure.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe main AIM spacecraft is planned to carry at least three smaller spacecraft \u2013 the Mascot-2 asteroid lander, being provided by DLR (Mascot-1 is already flying on JAXA\u2019s Hayabusa-2), as well as two or more CubeSats. AIM would test optical communications and inter-satellite links in deep space, essential technology for future exploration.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIf approved, AIM would also be Europe\u2019s contribution to the larger Asteroid Impact &amp; Deflection Assessment mission: AIDA. In late 2022, the NASA-led part of AIDA will arrive: the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, probe will approach the binary system \u2013 then crash straight into the asteroid moon at about 6 km\/s.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAIM is intended to be watching closely as DART hits Didymoon. In the aftermath, it will perform detailed before-and-after comparisons on the structure of the body itself, as well as its orbit, to characterise DART\u2019s kinetic impact and its consequences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/videos\/2015\/04\/asteroid_impact_mission\/15361020-1-eng-GB\/Asteroid_Impact_Mission_small.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"96\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"8\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nThe Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) is a candidate mission currently undergoing preliminary design work.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nLaunched in October 2020, AIM would travel to a binary asteroid system \u2013 the paired Didymos asteroids, which will come a comparatively close 11 million km to Earth in 2022. The 800 m-diameter main body is orbited by a 170 m moon, informally called \u2018Didymoon\u2019.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThis smaller body is AIM\u2019s focus: the spacecraft would perform high-resolution visual, thermal and radar mapping of the moon to build detailed maps of its surface and interior structure.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe main AIM spacecraft is planned to carry at least three smaller spacecraft \u2013 the Mascot-2 asteroid lander, being provided by DLR (Mascot-1 is already flying on JAXA\u2019s Hayabusa-2), as well as two or more CubeSats. AIM would test optical communications and inter-satellite links in deep space, essential technology for future exploration.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIf approved, AIM would also be Europe\u2019s contribution to the larger Asteroid Impact &amp; Deflection Assessment mission: AIDA. In late 2022, the NASA-led part of AIDA will arrive: the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, probe will approach the binary system \u2013 then crash straight into the asteroid moon at about 6 km\/s.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAIM is intended to be watching closely as DART hits Didymoon. In the aftermath, it will perform detailed before-and-after comparisons on the structure of the body itself, as well as its orbit, to characterise DART\u2019s kinetic impact and its consequences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=229286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=229286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=229286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=229286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}