Mythical Spanish knight Don Quixote, famed for charging at windmills he mistakes for enemies, is to ride again — this time in space — on a cosmic mission to save the world.
The European Space Agency has given high priority to a Spanish project that aims to attack an approaching asteroid to see whether spacecraft can deflect a body that may in future be on a collision course with Earth.
Two crafts will set out — one named after the valiant knight of Cervantes’ classic tale, the other after his long-suffering servant, Sancho Panza.
Spacecraft Sancho will circle the chosen asteroid while the other — aping its literary namesake — smashes headlong into the target.
The orbiting Sancho and Earth-based telescopes will watch closely to see what, if any, effect the impact has on the speed and direction of the asteroid.
At the same time Sancho, being in orbit around the asteroid, will be able to detect fragments thrown from it by the impact and get a glimpse of its internal structure.
“It will tell us how the target responds to an impact,” said Alan Harris, Chairman of the Near-Earth Object Mission Advisory Panel.
“If you think about the chain of events between detecting a hazardous object and doing something about it, there is one area in which we have no experience at all and that is in directly interacting with an asteroid, trying to alter its orbit.”
Astronomers are aware of the devastating effect an asteroid impact had on the world’s dinosaurs 65 million years ago and have so far found more than 1,000 large space objects that might one day collide with the Earth.
Although there is no suggestion that a kamikaze-style spacecraft impact on an asteroid would destroy the threat, it may generate the relatively small amount of energy scientists think would be enough to nudge it off course.
If all goes to plan, the Quixote mission could launch between 2010 and 2015, the space agency said.
