ESA is going to deflect an asteroid:

ESA is going to deflect an asteroid:
http://www.esa.int/About_Us/GSP/Aste...targets_Didymo
quote
For the last two years, ESA has been working with international partners on the mission concept,
dubbed AIDA. Last week, research centres each side of the Atlantic agreed the spacecraft would
target asteroid Didymos.
end quote

On Feb 23, 12:52*pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
ESA is going to deflect an asteroid:
*http://www.esa.int/About_Us/GSP/Aste...targets_Didymo
quote
*For the last two years, ESA has been working with international partners on the mission concept,
dubbed AIDA. Last week, research centres each side of the Atlantic agreed the spacecraft would
target asteroid Didymos.
end quote

That's a very good step in the right direction, especially since the
next several thousand years we'll have to continually and increasingly
defend ourselves from the Sirius Oort cloud that could easily have
several solar masses worth of asteroids and planetoids to contend
with.

Eventually Sirius and it's enormous (8 ly radii) Oort cloud will move
on.

btw; your link "Asteroid_impact_mission_targets_Didymo" is broken.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/65803_Didymos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_%28spacecraft%29

http://www.esa.int/About_Us/GSP/Aste...argets_Didymos

On a sunny day (Sun, 24 Feb 2013 17:11:41 -0800 (PST)) it happened Brad Guth
wrote in
:

btw; your link "Asteroid_impact_mission_targets_Didymo" is broken.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/65803_Didymos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_%28spacecraft%29

http://www.esa.int/About_Us/GSP/Aste...argets_Didymos

Thanks, something must have gone wrong in cut and paste...
:-)

On Feb 25, 1:22*am, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Sun, 24 Feb 2013 17:11:41 -0800 (PST)) it happened Brad Guth
wrote in
:



btw; your link "Asteroid_impact_mission_targets_Didymo" is broken.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/65803_Didymos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_%28spacecraft%29

http://www.esa.int/About_Us/GSP/Aste...argets_Didymos

Thanks, something must have gone *wrong in cut and paste...
:-)

Deflecting an asteroid of any significant mass is going to require
some reaction thrust applied directly to the rock. Robotic tripod
landers packing a sufficient cache of fuel or energy for ion
thrusting, seems doable.

They could apply a very good test for this thrust reaction method, as
to modifying the weird orbit of our second moon. Otherwise, a
tethered tug applied to our moon should be the case of doing what's
right, by assisting it to move further away and slowing its orbital
velocity at the same time, in order to part it within Earth L1.