European Planetary Science Congress 2017
17–22 September 2017
Radisson Blu Hotel Latvija | Riga | Latvia

MT5

Defense of Planet Earth and the AIDA mission
Convener: P. Michel  | Co-Conveners: A. Cheng , A. Rivkin , M. Küppers 
Oral programme
 / Wed, 20 Sep, 14:00–15:30  / Room Mercury
Poster programme
 / Attendance Thu, 21 Sep, 17:45–19:15  / Poster area

AIDA is an international collaboration between ESA and NASA. AIDA will deflect an asteroid with a kinetic impactor, hitting it at 6 km/s with NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, while the ESA Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) will rendezvous with the target and measure results of the DART impact. The AIDA target will be the binary potentially hazardous asteroid (65803) Didymos. This session will discuss asteroid impact risks, expected damage, and mitigation techniques. It will discuss AIDA as the first demonstration of a kinetic impactor and the first controlled experiment to measure the asteroid responses. AIDA will measure the momentum transfer efficiency of the kinetic impact and key physical properties of the target asteroid. Topics invited for this session include: asteroid impact threats and damage modeling; asteroid impact mitigation techniques; predictions of AIDA impact outcomes and Didymos dynamical responses; in situ and remote observations of Didymos.