A practical test being performed during the 2015 ESTEC Open Day of the navigation camera planned to guide ESA’s proposed Asteroid Impact Mission around its double-asteroid target. <br /> <br />Many of the thousands of visitors to ESA’s technical heart in Noordwijk, the Netherlands on Sunday 4 October were able to see the simulation for themselves, set up by the Agency’s Guidance, Navigation and Control section. <br /> <br />The red robotic arm seen left held the camera and moved it smoothly through three dimensions next to a spinning model of the Didymos asteroid system, destination of the Agency’s candidate Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM). <br /> <br />The experiment was performed in partnership with ESA’s Automation and Robotics section, supplying the COMAU robotic arm. <br /> <br />The screen in the foreground depicted the camera’s eye view as it gradually came closer to the main asteroid.AIM is a candidate mission of opportunity currently undergoing preliminary design work, set to be presented to ESA’s Council of Ministers in November 2016 for approval. <br /> <br />With a planned launch window opening in October 2020, AIM would be humanity’s first mission to a binary asteroid system, putting down a lander on the smaller asteroid of the pair and providing detailed before-and-after mapping as part of the larger Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment mission.
