  A realistic mission scenario for the deflection of fictitious asteroid
2015PDC is investigated that makes use of the ion beam shepherd concept as
primary deflection technique. The article deals with the design of a low thrust
rendezvous trajectory to the asteroid, the estimation of the propagated
covariance ellipsoid and the outcome of a slow-push deflection starting from
three worst case scenarios (impacts in New Delhi, Dhaka and Teheran).
Displacing the impact point towards very low populated areas, as opposed to
full deflection, is found to be the simplest and most effective mitigation
approach. Mission design, technical and political aspects are discussed.

Optimization and Control;Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics