Taking A.I.M. at 65803 Didymos;
Earth is preparing to defend against incoming asteroids.
65803 Didymos is the first asteroid being targeted.
"The primary is about 800 m in diameter and the moon 150 m in diameter. The moon is in an orbit about 1.1 km from the primary and with an orbital period of 11.9 hours. Didymos is the most easily reachable asteroid of its size from Earth".
It's next closest approach is expected November 2123 at a minimum distance of 0.0712311160815433 AU or (0.071.... x 150 million kilometers ) at 10,684,667.4122KM
"As well as a high-resolution imager, AIM’s scientific payload is forecast to include a thermal infrared imager to study the surface geophysical and thermal properties of Didymoon, a high-frequency radar to sound the asteroid’s surface and shallow subsurface and a low-frequency radar to map its deep interior structure." "The DART spacecraft is a simple design - a kinetic impactor that carries an instrument, Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for OpNav (DRACO), which will observe the asteroid upon approach. In October 2022, the ESA AIM spacecraft will observe the impact to see how much the impact with DART deflects Didymos B. DART is the first test in NASA's Planetary Defense Technology Demonstration Plan.
NASA DART Interceptor
The main AIM spacecraft is planned to carry at least three smaller spacecraft – the Mascot-2 asteroid lander, being provided by DLR (Mascot-1 is already flying on JAXA’s Hayabusa-2), as well as two or more CubeSats .
--> Here is another recent Steem post about an Asteroid hunter!
Good Articles, good job