China, which has been working on establishing its own space station, is heating up the space race. China’s current plan is to stop potential unwanted visitors from space, namely asteroids.
THEY WILL ESTABLISH A DEFENSE SYSTEM IN SPACE!
According to TRT Haber’s report from Global Times; China is trying to build a system that can effectively track asteroids and potentially change their course to protect Earth from a possible impact.
The news included the information that Wu Yanhua, vice-president of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), announced on Sunday that Beijing plans to crash into an asteroid in 2025 as part of an experiment.
Speaking to China Central Television during this year’s China Space Day event, Wu was reported to have said that what is planned is a near-Earth asteroid tracking and defense system that could potentially also protect the spacecraft.
The system, which will include both ground-based and space-based elements, will catalog and analyze asteroids to determine which ones pose a potential threat to Earth or humanity’s activities in space.
The project is still awaiting approval by Chinese authorities and requires “coordination of multiple departments”, the Global Times reported.
CHINA IS NOT THE FIRST COUNTRY
China is not the only country concerned about the threat that asteroids may pose to Earth. The American Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is also working on a similar project. NASA’s project consists of the DART mission.
NASA launched an investigation designed to crash into a small asteroid in November 2021 to test whether it is possible to change course by impact and whether this would be an effective planetary defense against such a threat.
Launched as part of the American Space and Aviation Administration’s (NASA) Dart mission, the spacecraft will crash into the asteroid Dimorphos and try to change its trajectory with its speed.
NASA SAID NO ROUTE FOR 100 YEARS BUT…
NASA said last October that no known asteroid that could cause serious damage is on a collision course with Earth in the next 100 years. But the agency added that 60 percent of such space rocks may actually be undiscovered.