NASA plans to continue with the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission even with the earlier decision from the European Space Agency to pull out of the mission.
NASA and ESA has been working together on a joint effort with AIDA, wherein each agency was tasked to build a spacecraft that will be sent to near Earth asteroids, Space News reported. ESA is tasked to build the Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM), which is supposed to launch on October 2020 and reach near Earth asteroid Didymos on May 2022 to observe the collision between Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) and Didymoon.
Didymoon is the moonlet of Didymos. And NASA was tasked to build the DART, which will be launched in December 2020 and collide with Didymoon in October 2022. Didymos is an asteroid with an 800 meter diameter with a moonlit called Didymoon just 150 meters orbiting around it.
NASA's plan to save earth
AIM is supposed to observe the impact and aftermath of DART and Didymoon to determine the deflection of its orbit. This mission aims to test the kinetic impactor, which is a concept that could help deflect asteroids that are too close or headed to Earth.
No Help From Other Agencies
However, during the December 2 ESA Ministerial Council meeting, European agencies decided not to put funding on AIM, IFL Science reported. Instead, the council chose to fund other projects like the the International Space Station (ISS) and the 2020 ExoMars rover.
But scientists announced during the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in San Francisco that NASA will push on with the project without the help of ESA. According to scientists, they will observe the collision between DART and Didymoon using Earth-based telescopes.
According to NASA, DART was designed to work independently from AIM. The official decision from NASA will be announced on March 2017, but hopefully they will still continue with the AIDA mission.
