China Targets Near-Earth

Asteroid for Upcoming

De9ection Test
An upcoming Chinese mission will attempt to de4ect a small asteroid in
the ultimate showdown of planetary defense.

By Passant Rabie
Published July 11, 2024 | Comments (17)

China is targeting a small non-threatening near-Earth asteroid for a daring

attempt to run into it at high speeds and move it off its course. The Chinese
asteroid deflection test could happen as early as 2027, in a project similar to
NASA’s recent DART mission.

A recent paper in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration revealed new details
about China’s upcoming planetary defense mission, which will also serve a
dual purpose and probe the ancient space rock for clues regarding its origin.

China first announced its plans to launch an asteroid deflection mission in

late 2022, targeting asteroid 2019 VL5 with a pair of spacecraft launching in
2025. According to the new paper, however, China is now targeting a different
asteroid, 2015 XF261, with a launch date no earlier than 2027. The target of
the mission may change as China refines its launch window.

Asteroid 2015 XF261 is around 98 feet wide (30 meters) and had a recent
encounter with Earth when it zipped past our planet at a distance of 31 million
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 miles (50 million kilometers) on Tuesday, July 9. The near-Earth asteroid
routinely passes by the planet twice a year, with the next flyby on February 21,
2025.

Of the 31,000 near-Earth asteroids that have been discovered, about 2,300
are considered potentially hazardous by NASA. These are asteroids that come
within 30 million miles of our planet. The chosen asteroid for the mission
poses no current threat to Earth, but the test aims to display a method of
deflecting a space rock should one be headed towards our planet in the future.

China’s upcoming mission will send two spacecraft to orbit the asteroid for a
period between three to six months. One of the spacecraft is designated to
carry out observations to study its size, shape, composition, and orbit,
according to The Planetary Society. Its more violent twin, the impactor
spacecraft, will slam into the asteroid in a high-speed kinetic energy impact
test. The observation spacecraft will monitor the impact, as well as its
aftermath for a period of six to 12 months.

If this sounds slightly familiar, that’s because NASA pulled off a similar
mission not too long ago. NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test)
mission impacted a small asteroid in September 2022 to nudge it off its
orbital course. The mission targeted a small moonlet Dimorphos, which was
orbiting a larger space rock called Didymos and it was a success. Prior to
DART’s impact, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit around
Didymos, which decreased to 11 hours and 23 minutes after the
impact. A follow-up mission will launch in October to study the aftermath of
the DART mission. Unlike NASA’s mission, it’s not clear what kind of
deviation the Chinese mission will cause to its target asteroid, and whether it
would affect its distance from Earth.
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 China wants to get in on the planetary defense action, launching what is
essentially those two missions combined. With the two spacecraft launching at
the same time, the Chinese asteroid deflection test could potentially provide
more insight into how to protect our planet from incoming threats, as well as
learn more about the origins of the solar system by probing the ancient space
rocks orbiting around the Sun.

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