Don Quijote was one of six asteroid mission proposals studied in detail by ESA’s ESA Near-Earth Object Mission Advisory Panel in 2004, and highlighted as a mission that could provide a vital missing link in the chain from asteroid threat identification to addressing that threat.

The problem was money. ESA could not afford to mount the entire double-spacecraft mission by itself. Instead it became international in scale: NASA will fly the Double Asteroid Redirect Test spacecraft later this year, to impact the smaller of the Didymos binary asteroids in 2022. Then ESA’s Hera will follow it in 2024, arriving two years later.

Unfortunately Andrea will not be able to watch this grand-scale cosmic experiment he conceived. He passed away suddenly from a heart attack on the way to visit a friend.

“He is sorely missed,” adds Steve. “He had a massive intellect, and a sense of fun. I think he’d be very pleased to have a spacecraft named after him.”

Giovanni agrees: “Andrea had an asteroid named after him, 4701 Milani in the main Asteroid Belt, but I can imagine him thinking lots of scientists have asteroids named after them, very few get a space mission!”