NEOShield: Working towards an international near-Earth object mitigation demonstration mission

Abstract

NEOShield is a European-Union funded project to address impact hazard mitigation issues, coordinated by the German Aerospace Center, DLR. The NEOShield consortium consists of 13 research institutes, universities, and industrial partners from 6 countries and includes leading US and Russian space organizations. The primary aim of the project is to investigate in detail promising mitigation techniques, such as the kinetic impactor, blast deflection, and the gravity tractor, and devise feasible demonstration missions. Options for an international strategy for implementation when an actual impact threat arises will also be investigated. The motivation for NEOShield arose partly from consistent statements made in recent years by organizations such as The National Research Council of the US (2010) and the International Academy of Astronautics (2009), urging governments and relevant agencies to fund research and conduct experiments leading to a space mission to test our ability to deflect a threatening near-Earth object (NEO). The NEOShield project is structured to enable the results of scientific investigations into the physical properties of NEOs to flow into a subsequent technical phase, in which mitigation demonstration missions will be designed in sufficient detail to facilitate rapid development and launch by international partners in a later phase of funding.