NEOShield

NEOShield is an international EU-funded initiative to explore ways in which the planetary defense when threat to humanity by Near Earth Objects ( NEO, Earth's orbit crossing asteroids ) could look like. The primary purpose of the research is possible methods of Asteroid Defense ( Kinetic Impactor, Blast Deflection and Gravity Tractor ) to investigate. The research project began in January 2012.

Project participants

At the international research project, scientists and research institutions from European countries as well as Russia and the United States involved.

Participants include, inter alia, Astrium ( Germany, France and UK), Deimos Space ( Spain), Queen's University Belfast (UK), the Paris Observatory (France), the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France), the Open University (UK), TsNIIMash ( Russia), the SETI Institute (USA), the University of Surrey (UK) and the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed ​​Dynamics ( Germany ).

The project coordinator is the German Space Agency DLR.

Financing

NEOShield is funded as part of the EU FP7 program with 4 million euros and will run until mid-2015. An additional 1.8 million euros will be applied by the participating research institutions.