Nebula Public Library

The Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) is part of the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA). The intention of AIDA is to send two spacecraft, AIM and Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) to the binary asteroid 65803 Didymos, to investigate the kinetic effects of crashing an impactor spacecraft into the smaller body of the binary asteroid, hereafter called Didymoon. The large body is called Didymain. Ultimately the mission hopes to test whether a spacecraft could successfully deflect an asteroid on collision course with Earth.