European Space Agency planning mission to move an asteroid.

The program, called Don Quijote, has been underway since 2002, and aims to send two spacecraft to a near Earth asteroid. One craft would be used to smash into the asteroid to throw it off course, with the other to orbit the asteroid and watch the effects of the collision. Scientists hope to use this data to allow a future mission to be quickly launched, if an asteroid is found to be heading towards Earth.

New research published last month is now pushing for extra equipment to be placed on the orbiting satellite. They argue that watching the impact is not enough - the spacecraft also needs to measure the mass, density, speed, and type of material of the asteroid to allow the required calculations to be completed.

While it will make the mission better overall, it does add a huge cost to the mission which is currently being funded solely by the European Space Agency.