China is looking to get into the planetary defense business. A new paper by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) confirms that in 2030, the country plans to conduct a test mission to deflect a small asteroid from its current course.
If you’re going to have a space race, making the goal to develop a way of protecting the Earth from rogue asteroids is one of the more benign ones. Assuming, of course, that no one gets the idea of using the technology to deflect asteroids towards the Earth. That gets into Bond villain territory.
The Earth is struck by objects from outer space up to 50 times a day. Not that it matters much because most of these are the size of grains of sand. However, on rare occasions much larger objects hit us, and on extremely rare occasions these objects are large enough to cause extinction events like wiping out the dinosaurs.
Even something like a medium-sized asteroid can cause tremendous damage. It doesn’t even have to hit the ground. In 2013, a meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia with the force of a 500-kiloton nuclear bomb, shattering windows and damaging buildings on the ground. In 1908, an asteroid exploded over Tunguska, Siberia with a force of up to 50 megatons.
In both cases (and others), humanity was very, very lucky. But luck isn’t the best basis for planning the future, so there’s a lot of interest these days in finding ways of identifying, plotting, and deflecting potentially dangerous asteroids before they become an active menace.
In a paper published in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration, the CNSA outlines a planned mission to demonstrate China’s capability to carry out such a deflection. The target is a near-Earth asteroid about 100 ft (30 m) in diameter called (NEO) 2015 XF261, which passed within 31 million miles (50 million km) of us on June 9, 2024.
The purpose of the unnamed mission isn’t just to deflect the asteroid, but to determine the shape, size, composition, and structure of the target asteroid using spectral and laser 3D detectors, mid-field color cameras, detection radars, and dust particle analyzers.
These observations will take place over three to six months after the spacecraft goes into orbit around the asteroid in 2030. After the observation is completed, a kinetic impactor will be fired at the asteroid and the spacecraft will remain on station for six to 12 months to measure the effects of the impact. This includes assessing changes in the asteroid’s orbit, studying the impact crater, and analyzing the ejected materials.
Source: CNSA
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