China announces space mission to deflect dangerous asteroids

China announces mission to detect and redirect asteroids, especially those that could threaten Earth. To that end, the country’s space agency must develop a system that can catalog and track nearby objects, and then send a spacecraft to collide with the occupier and change its trajectory. The first tests are expected on an as yet unidentified asteroid in 2025.

Wu Yanhua, deputy director of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said in an interview with state television broadcast by the website, that the project aims to combine the efforts of other countries for planetary defense. Global Times. He also announced the creation of new software to simulate the possible effects so that humanity knows how to deal with the arrival of a possible disaster.

Asteroid tracking provided by the CNSA follows observations and simulations by other space agencies around the world. In addition to Russia and the European Space Agency (ESA), the United States launched a mission through NASA last year that also seeks to change the trajectory of such an object. The idea is that its probe collides with the asteroid pair Dimorphos and Didymos, which are more than 10 million kilometers from Earth.

Although most cosmic objects disintegrate as they approach Earth’s atmosphere, the impact of larger asteroids worries experts. Therefore, the data provided by the Chinese initiative could help develop larger tools for planetary defense if needed.