AIDA: Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment

The Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission is a kinetic impactor experiment to demonstrate asteroid impact hazard mitigation by deflecting an asteroid. AIDA is an international cooperation between NASA and ESA, consisting of two mission elements: the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission and the ESA Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) rendezvous mission. The primary goals of AIDA are (i) to demonstrate the kinetic impact technique on a potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroid and (ii) to measure and characterize the deflection caused by the impact. The AIDA target will be the binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, with the deflection experiment to occur in September, 2022. The DART impact on the secondary member of the binary at ~7 km/s will alter the binary orbit period, which can be measured by Earth-based observatories. The AIM spacecraft will characterize the asteroid target and monitor results of the impact in situ at Didymos. AIDA will return fundamental new information on the mechanical response and impact cratering process at real asteroid scales, and consequently on the collisional evolution of asteroids with implications for planetary defence, human spaceflight, and near-Earth object science and resource utilization. AIDA will return unique information on an asteroid's strength, surface physical properties and internal structure. Supporting Earth-based optical and radar observations, numerical simulation studies and laboratory experiments will be an integral part of AIDA