Europe ships to intercept asteroids studied: The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Johns Hopkins University (USA) have come together to carry out a project "low budget" in seeking to prevent asteroid impact with Earth.As explained by the European agency, in this mission, named AIDA, we propose the use of two small spacecraft that could be sent to intercept meteoroids. The first, designed by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University, and which would crash into a fireball.
Meanwhile, the second piece of ESA, would be dedicated to monitor in detail the operation before and after the collision, which would complete the observation from Earth.
"The advantage is that the spaceships are simple and independent," stressed the head of the project's U.S. partner, Andy Cheng, adding that "everyone can do their research without the other."
For his part, Director of AIDA for ESA, Andres Galvez, has indicated that, by working together, the quantity and quality of the results improve significantly.
"Both missions to be shared are much better and offer joint investment", so that "a lot of joint mission data help validate various theories, as our impact model," concluded Galvez.
