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Chinese scientists discuss hitting asteroids with space rocks
October 26, 2021
China has held a national conference on planetary defense, following the demonstration of a near-Earth asteroid defense system. According to reports, China held the “First National Conference on Planetary Defense” in Guilin, Guangxi Province from Oct. 23 to 27, with Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s Lunar and Deep Space Exploration Project, as the conference chairman.
The conference aims to promote the cross-integration of China’s near-Earth small celestial body monitoring, early warning, and defense fields, and discuss relevant frontier scientific issues, key technology development, engineering implementation plans, policy and legal construction, and international cooperation and exchanges, so as to promote China’s planetary defense field Faster development and improvement of the overall level.
As early as late April this year, Zhang Kejian, director of the National Space Administration of China, said that China will demonstrate the construction of a near-Earth asteroid defense system in the future, which is on par with the fourth phase of the Lunar Exploration Project, the Planetary Exploration Project, and the construction of an international lunar research station, and is a key space project for China to promote in the future.
At present, the planetary defense considered possible internationally is generally through active means, which include nuclear explosion, kinetic impact, laser ablation, ion beam traction, gravitational drag, mass drive, etc., to destroy the structure of the asteroid or deflect the asteroid’s orbit.
According to the Chinese media Global Times, a research team at the CAS Key Laboratory of Electronic Information Technology for Complex Space Systems at the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed a “rock-to-rock” defense solution to deal with potentially threatening asteroids of large size.
The Apophis asteroid, with a diameter of about 350 meters and a weight of about 61 million tons, has been cited by Chinese scientists as an example, and its closest distance to Earth in 2029 will be about 38,000 kilometers. Simulations show that the classical kinetic impact method can deflect the Apophis asteroid by 176 kilometers, while the “rock to rock” program can deflect the Apophis asteroid by 1866 kilometers, an order of magnitude higher than the classical kinetic impact method, making the asteroid more away from Earth.
The “Rock to Rock” enhanced kinetic impact asteroid defense mission concept can break through the carrying capacity and envelope limitations of the ground-launched man-made impactor, by capturing a hundred-ton mass of rock in space, thus significantly increasing the impactor mass, and ultimately achieving an order of magnitude improvement in asteroid defense effectiveness.
