Humanity will for the first time have the chance to find out if we can deflect an asteroid, the European Space Agency (ESA) said—knowledge that could be useful in the future should an asteroid be on a collision course with Earth.
ESA on Tuesday awarded a 129-million-euro ($154 million) contract to design, build, and test a spacecraft, named after Hera, the Greek goddess of marriage, that will be used to observe the results of an experiment to deflect a small asteroid that will pass within about 6 million miles of Earth.
