Chinese researchers want to send more than 23 of China’s largest rockets to deflect the path of a giant asteroid that was on a collision course with Earth.
The idea is more than just science fiction. Sometime between late 2021 and early 2022, the United States will launch a robotic spacecraft to intercept two asteroids relatively close to Earth.
When it arrives a year later, NASA’s spacecraft will land on the two smallest rocky objects to see how much the asteroid’s path has changed. It will be the first human attempt to change the course of a celestial body.
At the Chinese National Space Science Center, researchers found in simulations that 23 Long March 5 rockets operating simultaneously could deflect a large asteroid from its original course by a distance of 1.4 times the radius of Earth.
Their calculations are based on an asteroid called Bennu, orbiting the sun, the same width as the Empire State Building. It belongs to a class of rocks that can cause regional or continental damage. Asteroids larger than one kilometer will have global consequences
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China has successfully launched six Long March 5 missiles since 2016, the latter causing some security concerns as their remains re-entered Earth’s atmosphere in May this year.
“The proposal to retain the launch rocket’s upper cabin for a spacecraft guidance vehicle, and to create a large kinetic collider to deflect an asteroid, seems to me a good concept,” said Professor Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen’s University Center for Astrophysics Research in Belfast. northern Ireland.
“By increasing the mass that collides with the asteroid, simple physics should ensure a much greater effect,” Fitzsimmons added.
Professor Gareth Collins of Imperial College London said current estimates show there is a roughly 1% chance that a 100-meter-wide asteroid will collide with Earth in the next 100 years.
“The probability of something the size of a Bennu impact happening is 10 times lower,” Collins notes. Scientists say changing the asteroid’s path is less dangerous than blasting rocks with nuclear explosives, which can create smaller fragments without changing its course.
Copyright © Thomson Reuters.
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