Dawn of Asteroid Day

ESA Space in Images Title AIM at Didymos Released 29/06/2016 8:41 am Copyright ESA - ScienceOffice.org Description - ESA's proposed Asteroid Impact Mission and its twin CubeSats, with its microlander in place on the smaller of the two Didymos asteroids. ESA performs a wide variety of asteroid research, and is participating in international Asteroid Day tomorrow. AIM is proposed for launch in 2020 to be in place around Didymos in late 2022 when the NASA DART spacecraft impacts. As well as demonstrating key deep-space technologies and studying Didymoon in unprecedented detail, the mission will be ideally placed to document the effect of the impact on the asteroid body and its orbital path. AIM and DART together form the international Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) . Asteroid Day is an annual global movement to increase public awareness of potential asteroid impacts with Earth, and the importance of guarding against them. It is held each year on 30 June, the anniversary of the largest impact in recent history, the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia.
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