Society for Popular Astronomy

Asteroids are getting a lot of attention these days, and the means to reach and examine these bodies with space probes and landers has been achieved. But there still remains the problem of how to avoid the catastrophe of a "rogue asteroid" colliding with Earth.Several approaches to solving this problem have been explored.
Now research and engineering teams in Nasa and the European Space Agency have come up with Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment ( Aida ). The idea is to design a space probe that would be crashed into an asteroid to test the viability of this technique.
The space agencies are planning on the possibility of sending two probes to an asteroid between Earth and Mars. One probe would be slammed into the asteroid, while the second probe would examine the results of the impact at the crash site.

Brian
There might be several possible dodgy outcomes. One being; the asteroid crash spacecraft might deflect the asteroid so it heads off in a crash course towards earth ?
I wish we still had that old Anderson shelter in the garden.
Best wishes from Cliff

Well Cliff, let's hope for a spectacular meteor shower .