Produced by: Tarun Mishra Designed by: Manoj Kumar
China is preparing its inaugural mission to deflect an asteroid as part of a planetary defence initiative. The mission aims to demonstrate Earth’s protection capabilities.
Credit: NASA
The mission will deploy two spacecraft: one to impact the asteroid and another to observe the event. The goal is to gather data on the asteroid and learn more about the solar system’s formation.
Credit: NASA
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has likely chosen the near-Earth object (NEO) 2015 XF261, a 100-foot-wide asteroid, as the mission’s target.
2015 XF261 recently passed within 31 million miles of Earth on July 9, traveling at 26,000 mph. This flyby provided valuable data for mission planning.
China’s increasing interest in planetary defense is highlighted by this mission, which follows similar efforts by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
The CNSA mission follows NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which successfully impacted the asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022, demonstrating the feasibility of kinetic impactors for asteroid deflection.
In October 2024, ESA will launch the Hera spacecraft to further study the DART mission’s impact on the Didymos system. Hera will rendezvous with Dimorphos and Didymos in 2026.
The CNSA mission is expected to launch by 2030. CNSA director Wu Weiren has suggested a potential launch date around 2027. Potential launch windows for impacting 2015 XF261 include April 2027, April 2028, April 2029, and April 2030, when the asteroid will pass within varying distances of Earth.
Initially, CNSA planned a planetary defense test in 2025 targeting the asteroid 2019 VL5. It is unclear why the target was switched to 2015 XF261.