Satellite and Space Communication Technology

Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM)

The Asteroid Impact Mission is a small ESA mission of opportunity to explore and demonstrate technologies for future missions while performing a scientific examination on a binary asteroid and addressing planetary defense. Asteroids and comets are very interesting objects, being the remnants of the earliest years of the formation of our Solar System, more than four billion years ago. The word asteroid means "star-like" and these objects appear in the sky as bright, point-like stars. But, unlike stars, asteroids are rocks orbiting our Solar System: they don’t emit light on their own and are visible only because they reflect sunlight.