A realistic mission scenario for the deflection of fictitious asteroid2015PDC is investigated that makes use of the ion beam shepherd concept asprimary deflection technique. The article deals with the design of a low thrustrendezvous trajectory to the asteroid, the estimation of the propagatedcovariance ellipsoid and the outcome of a slow-push deflection starting fromthree worst case scenarios (impacts in New Delhi, Dhaka and Teheran).Displacing the impact point towards very low populated areas, as opposed tofull deflection, is found to be the simplest and most effective mitigationapproach. Mission design, technical and political aspects are discussed.
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