A UK astronomer will help prevent future asteroids crashing into earth, by joining ground control on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) first planetary defence mission, it has been announced. Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, of the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, will be at the European Space Operations Centre in Germany for a mission which seeks to analyse the first ever asteroid to be artificially redirected by humans. The ESA Hera mission aims to study the small asteroid moon Dimorphos, whose trajectory the Nasa Dart altered in 2022 using “kinetic impactor” technology,…