China has announced plans to carry out a planetary defense mission aimed at testing the feasibility of deflecting a near-Earth asteroid. According to scientists, the spacecraft will be launched to collide head-on with an asteroid tens of millions of miles from Earth. This was reported on the South China Morning Post.
The impact is expected to change its orbit by only 1.2 to 2 inches, but this is enough to prove the concept of redirecting asteroids. If successful, China will become the second country after the United States to achieve such a result.
The mission will not only test kinetic impact technologies, but also test new communication, navigation, and autonomous control systems. Scientists also plan to use an expanded set of observation tools to record changes in the asteroid’s trajectory as accurately as possible.
