China is targeting a small non-threatening near-Earth asteroid for a daring attempt to run into it at high speeds and move it off its course. The Chinese asteroid deflection test could happen as early as 2027, in a project similar to NASA’s recent DART mission.
A recent paper in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration revealed new details about China’s upcoming planetary defense mission, which will also serve a dual purpose and probe the ancient space rock for clues regarding its origin.
China first announced its plans to launch an asteroid deflection mission in late 2022, targeting asteroid 2019 VL5 with a pair of spacecraft launching in 2025. According to the new paper, however, China is now targeting a different asteroid, 2015 XF261, with a launch date no earlier than 2027. The target of the mission may change as China refines its launch window.
Asteroid 2015 XF261 is around 98 feet wide (30 meters) and had a recent encounter with Earth when it zipped past our planet at a distance of 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) on Tuesday, July 9. The near-Earth asteroid routinely passes by the planet twice a year, with the next flyby on February 21, 2025.
Of the 31,000 near-Earth asteroids that have been discovered, about 2,300 are considered potentially hazardous by NASA. These are asteroids that come within 30 million miles of our planet. The chosen asteroid for the mission poses no current threat to Earth, but the test aims to display a method of deflecting a space rock should one be headed towards our planet in the future.
China’s upcoming mission will send two spacecraft to orbit the asteroid for a period between three to six months. One of the spacecraft is designated to carry out observations to study its size, shape, composition, and orbit, according to The Planetary Society. Its more violent twin, the impactor spacecraft, will slam into the asteroid in a high-speed kinetic energy impact test. The observation spacecraft will monitor the impact, as well as its aftermath for a period of six to 12 months.
If this sounds slightly familiar, that’s because NASA pulled off a similar mission not too long ago. NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission impacted a small asteroid in September 2022 to nudge it off its orbital course. The mission targeted a small moonlet Dimorphos, which was orbiting a larger space rock called Didymos and it was a success. Prior to DART’s impact, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit around Didymos, which decreased to 11 hours and 23 minutes after the impact. A follow-up mission will launch in October to study the aftermath of the DART mission. Unlike NASA’s mission, it’s not clear what kind of deviation the Chinese mission will cause to its target asteroid, and whether it would affect its distance from Earth.
China wants to get in on the planetary defense action, launching what is essentially those two missions combined. With the two spacecraft launching at the same time, the Chinese asteroid deflection test could potentially provide more insight into how to protect our planet from incoming threats, as well as learn more about the origins of the solar system by probing the ancient space rocks orbiting around the Sun.
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