We have known for some time that China has the ambition to equip itself with what looks like a protection system with planetary implications. A mission must indeed attempt to deflect an asteroid that threatens to one day cross Earth’s orbit. However, we now learn that the plans of Chinese researchers would be rather advanced and that the country is aiming for a window of opportunity in the course of the year 2026.
The mission will carry an orbiter and an impactor module aboard a Long March rocket. During a conference, Long Lehao, chief engineer of Chinese rockets, gives more details on the mission, while confirming the launch window. The SpaceNews site explains that one of the slides of the presentation indeed confirms the launch in 2026 “on board a Long March 3B rocket”.
How does China plan to deflect an asteroid?
The mission’s orbiter will be used to collect kinetic data while the impactor is the element that will attempt to deflect the satellite by crashing into it. Generally, the mission is very similar to Nasa’s DART mission which also aims to deflect an asteroid, this time a miniature binary system composed of objects called Didymos and Dimorphos. The NASA mission has already been launched and should arrive at its destination in September 2022.
Chinese researchers will not be the first to test such technology. But nothing says that the approach of the two space agencies will lead to the same results… Acquiring the capacity to deflect near-Earth asteroids has become a priority for NASA, as for China, which is multiplying missions while gradually reducing the technological gap with the American space agency.
The asteroid that caused the end of the dinosaurs would have crashed in the Yucatan more than 65 million years ago, and it is not unlikely that one day the Earth will once once more cross paths with an object of this type. Which might mean the end of humanity or even the end of life on Earth, depending on the size of the object. Although, it should still be emphasized, the probability of such an impact occurring tomorrow is only 1 in 300,000.
The Earth, in orbit around the sun, however, crosses many dangerous objects even if the essential ends up failing to crash on our planet. And we now have capabilities to detect the largest and most dangerous objects, long before they become a threat. But right now, detecting is pretty much our only defense.
Because saving the Earth from an asteroid is not as simple as in Armageddon. To blow up the target is to risk later causing a shower of smaller asteroids with even more serious consequences. And deviating is also a challenge, especially when the mass increases and therefore enormous amounts of energy have to be mobilized.
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The approach adopted by the NASA and Chinese researchers is therefore rather to cause a very slight deflection, the effect of which amplifies with distance.
