Asteroid fears: ‘Threat to mankind’ ESA chief’s admission over Earth-bound space rock

“The NASA and ESA co-operation is called the AIDA and we will be responsible for the monitoring spacecraft and the Americans would work on the impacter.

“A possible scenario for a future deflection mission would be to launch the impacter at a speed of approximately six or seven kilometres per second, roughly 21,000km/h straight into the asteroid.”

The original plan called for a European spacecraft, the Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM), to operate in synergy with a large NASA impactor called Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) and observe the immediate effects of the impact. 

AIM was cancelled in 2016 when Germany was unable to fund its portion, and after some backlash within ESA, 

It has since been replaced with HERA, that will launch five years after DART to orbit and study the crater on the asteroid.

DART is currently planned to impact in 2022 on the small moon of asteroid Didymos, while Hera will arrive at in 2027, five years after DART’s impact.