China has plans to build an asteroid monitoring and defence system, according to Global Times. The country also plans to carry out a technical experiment of the same by closely tracking and attacking an asteroid in 2025, according to the publication.
As part of the project, China will set up a ground-based and space-based monitoring and warning system that will catalogue and analyse asteroids that pose a threat to human space activities. After that, it will develop relevant technology and engineering to dispel the threats.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) will reportedly develop software that simulates possible impacts from asteroids that pass by Earth and will use it to rehearse defence processes to address the threat.
According to Li Mingtao, a professor at the National Space Science Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who spoke to Global Times, the most practical measure currently available to avoid potentially devastating asteroid impacts is to hit and change the original course of any asteroid that is a threat.
In order to do that, China will need a carrier rocket with massive amounts of thrust to crash into the asteroid with enough momentum to change its course of movement.
NASA is also currently testing a similar approach toward asteroid deflection in November 2021 as part of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. As part of the mission, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, aimed at the Didymos asteroid system.
The Didymos asteroid system comprises of two asteroids: Didymos (780 metres) and its ‘moonlet’ Dimorphos (160 metres). The DART spacecraft is aimed at Dimorphos, since it orbits Didymos at a much slower speed compared to the speed at which the pair orbits the Sun.
This means that DART’s kinetic impact within the system can be measured much more easily than a change can be observed based on the impact of a single asteroid around the Sun. The spacecraft is scheduled to intercept the Didymos system between September 26 and October 1 this year.
The most recent significant impact on Earth happened in 2013 when an 18-meter wide 11,000-ton meteor burst in a 460-kilotonne (between 20-30 times more powerful than Hiroshima) explosion above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. The shockwave generated by it injured more than 1000 people.
