China is making a bold attempt to target small, less hazardous asteroids approaching Earth and slam them into place at high speeds to deflect them. China’s asteroid deflection test, a project similar to NASA’s recent DART mission, could take place as early as 2027.
Recent paper In Deep Space Exploration Journal China has revealed new details about an upcoming planetary defense mission that will serve the dual purpose of studying ancient space rocks while also providing clues about their origins.
China first announced plans to launch an asteroid deflection mission in late 2022, with two spacecraft launching in 2025 to target asteroid 2019 VL5. But a new paper says China is now targeting another asteroid, 2015 XF261, with a launch date after 2027. The mission’s target may change as China refines its launch window.
Asteroid 2015 XF261 It is about 98 feet (30 meters) in diameter and passed Earth 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) away on Tuesday, July 9. The near-Earth asteroid regularly passes close to Earth twice a year, with its next flyby scheduled for February 21, 2025.
Of the 31,000 near-Earth asteroids discovered to date, approximately 2,300 are considered potentially hazardous. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)These are asteroids that will come within 30 million miles of Earth. While the asteroids selected for the mission do not pose a threat to Earth at present, the test is intended to show how to deflect space rocks if they come toward Earth in the future.
China’s next mission will send two spacecraft into orbit around the asteroid for three to six months, with one of the craft to conduct observations to determine the asteroid’s size, shape, composition and orbit. The Planetary SocietyThe impactor, a more powerful twin impactor, will slam into the asteroid in a high-velocity kinetic energy impact test, and the spacecraft will monitor the impact and its aftermath for six to 12 months.
If that sounds a little familiar, it’s because NASA recently completed a similar mission: NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Reorientation Test) mission. Collision with asteroid in September 2022 To deorbit, the mission targeted Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting a larger space rock called Didymos, and was successful. Before the impact, Dimorphos took 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit Didymos, but after the impact, this was reduced to 11 hours and 23 minutes. Follow-up Mission It is scheduled to launch in October to study the aftermath of the DART mission. Unlike the NASA mission, it is not clear what deviations the Chinese mission will cause to its target asteroid, or whether that will affect its distance from Earth.
China hopes to launch a combination of the two missions and join the planetary defense effort. By launching two spacecraft simultaneously, China’s asteroid deflection test could provide further insight into how to protect Earth from looming threats, and it could also learn more about the origins of the solar system by studying ancient space rocks orbiting the sun.
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