ESA Plans Test of Asteroid Defense System

vinlud writes "It has been announced by Dutch television ESA has chosen the Don Quijote programme to investigate the possibilities of altering the collision course of asteroids heading for Earth. The program, selected among five other studies, contains two spacecraft: Hidalgo and Sancho. Hidalgo will impact an asteroid of approximately 500 m diameter at a relative speed of at least 10 km/s while Sancho will retreat to a safe distance to observe the impact. An animation of the mission sequence (6.49 Mb) can be downloaded from here."

Comments

That's NOT important

[superpulpsicle]

What's important is a very efficient backup of slashdot so I can still post in the case of a continent size meteor hitting earth.

Bull's eye!

[zeux]

I RTFA (however, I'm not new here!) and it seems all the other five studies were about observation only missions. This one is the only one to propose an actual 'impact'.

It's definitively more exciting but I wonder if it's not too hard to make such a millions miles away 'bull's eye'. 500 m in diameter is pretty small at this distance...

Re:Bull's eye!

[Rob Carr]

It's definitively more exciting but I wonder if it's not too hard to make such a millions miles away 'bull's eye'. 500 m in diameter is pretty small at this distance...

With the ability to correct the flight enroute, it shouldn't be too difficult at all. When Cassini went into orbit around Saturn, the navigation was so precise that they did not need to do a corrective burn.

Still, if for some gosh-awful reason you can't hit a 500 m target, this is the perfect time to find out!

Here's a bunch of folks that will probably have fun looking to see what effect the collision might have: The folks on the Minor Planet Mailing List are really into tracking the orbits of these rocks. I wouldn't be surprised if their data is the stuff that narrows the error bars on this experiment!

Low expectations?

[October_30th]

Do they have low expectations or why is the project named after a fictional character who was rather bonkers and fought windmills?

"The full original title was El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha. The adjective "quixotic," meaning "idealistic and impractical," derives from his name, and the expression "tilting at windmills" comes from his story."

Re:Low expectations?

[joeykiller]

Well, Don Quijote believed he were fighting knights, while he actually was fighting windmillds.

Most people would say that it would be impossible if not futile to attack windmills and believe you could win over them. But Don Quijote never doubted his abilites, no matter what Sancho Panza thought.

Maybe this is what ESA has thought about when they named their mission: Keep hope up, no matter how impossible the task seems.

Hidalgo's ultimate goal...

[sdo1]

Hidalgo will impact an asteroid of approximately 500 m diameter at a relative speed of at least 10 km/s...

... altering its trajectory into a orbit scheduled to collide with Earth in 2006 at which point the real test will begin.

-S

LIES about space weapons

[Doc Ruby]

These "asteroid defense" systems are lies told by weapons makers. They are designed to be expensive systems that can be pointed at the Earth. When the "missile defense" lies (eg. that they work) fail, as they always have in Europe, weapons makers turn to another irrational fear: asteroids. The odds of an asteroid damaging Europe are so much lower than many other preventable crises that the entire sham is transparent. The odds of AIDS killing millions is much higher, and more preventable. The odds of climate change killing millions are also much higher. The odds of a generation of people learning to watch TV rather than learning to read or think are much higher. There are known solutions to these likely crises that will cost less, and benefit much more. But they don't play on the kind of irrational fear that lets governments spend billions of people's money without accountability. So we'll pay for these lies once when we fund the sham, and again when the real threats come home to roost.

Re:LIES about space weapons

[tgibbs]

How do you propose fixing worldwide annihilation of human life by plague or Greenhouse after the fact? When you are dead, you won't care about the rest of the planet, but while you're alive, you can do something about the real threats.

It is highly doubtful that either plague or Greenhouse effect could kill off all human life. There has never been a plague that was anything close to 100% fatal, and it is biologically doubtful that such a thing is possible, given the large diversity and wide distribution of our population. As for the Greenhouse effect, plausible worst-case projections are on the order of a few degrees warmer, occurring over a fairly long period of time, and possibly an increase in severe weather. No plausible projection has the Greenhouse effect producing more than a modest effect on the size of the human population. I would place the probability of annihilation of human life by either of these events essentially at zero.

On the other hand, large asteroid impacts clearly have occurred in the past. There is credible scientific evidence that they have wiped out widely-distributed species in the past. Projections of consequences of a large impact suggest that it is plausible that such an impact could kill all human life. Asteroid impacts are the only known, credible, avoidable event that could potentially wipe out humanity. This would seem to justify significant investment in protection.

Damn!

[slimyrubber]

Guess we are doomed to die by hunger, terrorism, violent climate shift, war or MPAA.
I was really betting it would be an asteroid.

Testing the Asteroid Defense system for yourself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try it out here.

Re:Direct link to 6MB file - clever

[Jugalator]

Better link, maybe?

This is the European space agency

[panurge]

They work in all SI units. So, no conversions. Perhaps that's why Ariane is reliable.

It's All in the name

[Count of Montecristo]

While there will be incessant puns about the characters that this project is named after; given the fact that in the book, Don Quixote was out of his mind, I feel it is very appropriate, since it describes excactly what it does.

Perhaps the most famous part of this book is when Don Quixote gallantly charged at windmills, while Sancho watched. In his troubled mind, The windmills were evil Giants, which he sought to destroy to win the favors of his sweethart Dulcinea, wich is a very accurate depiction of what the program is supposed to do.

I find that the depiction, regardless of the obvious fact that in the book it was a hopeless cause; is a romantic metaphore, rather than an endorsement of failure, poor engineering or idealistic but unreachable goals.

As a side note, this book (El ingenioso Hidalgo, Don Quixote de la Mancha) is to the Spanish Language as The Count of Montecristo is to French, Luther's New testament translation is to German, and the works of Shakespeare are to English.

Missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see that most slashdotters are trolling on the actual mission of the spaceships. Their purpose is to impact the asteroid to determine its composition, structure, ect. to then, determine an appropiate course of action.

And the names do fit. They fit because Don Quijote tried to bring back the idealized lifestyle of chivalry. His desire was to protect the good cause and perhaps slay a dragon or two in the way. He was mocked by people because they believed such perils were nonexistent. Just like we mock this far fetched perhaps, but still necesary project that aims to be our first line of defense in case of a possible, if not improbable event.

I fail to see how people can criticize this and yet run SETI at home on their computers.

Godspeed Don Quijote, and Sancho Pansa, I for once, am gratefull of your so much needed lunacy.

Number Crunching

[Rob Carr]

Assuming that the Hildalgo probe masses in at 25 kg (the same as Sancho - it might be less) and is moving at 10km/sec and assuming the asteroid has a density of 3g/cc (giving a mass of 4x10^10 kg, and if the probe is absorbed into the asteroid and no material is lost from the asteroid, then the change of velocity for the asteroid will be about 6x10^-9 km/sec.

For comparison, the asteroid probably has a velocity somewhere on the order of 5-10km/sec.

If the asteroid and probe hit head on with both having a velocity (relative to the sun) of 10km/sec, then you can double the change to 1.2x10^-8 km/sec

It's probably a good idea to check my work. Here's how I did the calculation:

Let m1 be the probe and m2 be the asteroid.

v(center of mass)=(m1*v1+m2*v2)/(m1+m2). v2=0 for this reference frame and m1+m2 essentially equals m2. Since we're in the reference frame of the asteroid being stationary, the combination of probe and asteroid will still have the same velocity for the center of mass.

I hope I didn't botch this estimate....

why democracy is such a bad idea

[SmallFurryCreature]

Guys like this get to vote.

Sure one can question the wisdom of altering the course of an asteroid that is currently not on a course to earth as there is a risk that the new course might be a problem. Except that it would be reasonable to assume that the people at ESA have thought of this too.

The trajectories of space objects are something we actually understand really really well. It is simple math and the bigger objects have had their path calculated very accuratly centuries ago.

If we follow the advice of people like the above poster the human race would still be stuck up a tree worried about the dangers of the forest floor. Luckily we didn't and some of the monkeys got eaten but others survived and thrived.

objectives

[kyknos.org]

The mission has a very high scientific value, but it will also help in testing technologies required for future deflection missions and raise interest in people for space exploration. The mission will in particular: measure the mass of the asteroid, the ratio of the moments of inertia and the low order harmonics of its gravity field. model the asteroid shape before and after the impact, to detect changes (if any). determine the asteroid internal structure, especially the size the main solid pieces, the average particle size and thickness of regolith and of the debris layers in the space left between the main pieces. constrain the mechanical properties of the asteroid material. measure the orbital deflection of the asteroid as a result of the impact of Hidalgo measure the asteroid rotation state before and immediately after the impact. detect the dissipation of the non-principal axis rotation after the impact. determine the asteroid large scale mineralogical composition.