Ian Carnelli is in charge of the program for the preparation of future space missions at the European Space Agency (ESA) . An aerospace engineer, he has been involved for the last 12 years designing several space mission projects for the diversion of potentially dangerous asteroids. Since 2015 he is leading a team of scientists and engineers within the Hera planetary defence mission and Asteroid Impact Mission, an interplanetary probe project to test a deviation technique called “kinetic impact”, conducted in collaboration with the NASA.