China’s space agency announced on Sunday that a new mission might be conducted as early as 2025 on a potentially dangerous asteroid.
China’s space agency recently stated that it is working on a new space surveillance and defence system, which will be tested by crashing a spaceship into an asteroid. According to China National Space Administration (CSNA) deputy Wu Yanhua, who spoke to state-run news source Global Times on Sunday, the potential new mission will be launched as early as 2025 on a threatening asteroid by closely following and striking it to shift its orbit.
China has yet to decide which asteroid to attack. Mr Yanhua, on the other hand, said that the asteroid detecting system was created to protect spaceships as well as “Earth and mankind.”
The monitoring and warning system, according to CSNA, will be stationed both on Earth and in space, with the potential to collect and analyse asteroids that represent a threat to humanity’s space activities. Then, according to the agency, relevant technology and engineering will be developed to eliminate the hazards. The goal is to find a potentially dangerous asteroid and send a spacecraft to collide with it, modifying its orbit in the process.
Mr Yanhua told Global Times that the CSNA is building simulation software for possible impacts from near-Earth asteroids and that rehearsals for the defence procedure with other countries will be held.
Separately, Song Zhongping, a military specialist and space watcher, told the state-run media outlet that China’s defence system may be a valuable supplement in dealing with the possibility of asteroids colliding with Earth. Mr. Zhongping emphasised that the prospective mission is yet another realistic answer that China presents for establishing a society with a common future for humanity.
According to Global Times, the system is now in the project establishment phase and is being examined for permission.
Meanwhile, NewsHub reports that China’s intention to smash into an asteroid to change its trajectory is similar to NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) programme, which began in November last year. DART was first introduced in 2017. The NASA spacecraft will now collide with a binary asteroid to test whether it can alter its course, with the collision set for sometime after September of this year.
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