Chinese researchers propose deflecting 'Armageddon' asteroids with
rockets
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[July 07, 2021]
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese
researchers want to send more than 20 of China's largest rockets to
practice turning away a sizable asteroid - a technique that may
eventually be crucial if a killer rock is on a collision course with
Earth.
The idea is more than science fiction. Sometime between late 2021 to
early 2022, the United States will launch a robotic spacecraft to
intercept two asteroids relatively close to Earth.
When it arrives a year later, the NASA spacecraft will crash-land on the
smaller of the two rocky bodies to see how much the asteroid's
trajectory changes. It will be humanity's first try at changing the
course of a celestial body.
At China's National Space Science Center, researchers found in
simulations that 23 Long March 5 rockets hitting simultaneously could
deflect a large asteroid from its original path by a distance 1.4 times
the Earth's radius.
Their calculations are based on an asteroid dubbed Bennu, orbiting the
sun, which is as wide as the Empire State Building is tall. It belongs
to a class of rocks with the potential to cause regional or continental
damage. Asteroids spanning more than 1 km would have global
consequences.
The science center cited a recently published study in Icarus, a journal
on planetary science.
Long March 5 rockets are key to China's near-term space ambitions - from
delivering space station modules to launching probes to the Moon and
Mars. China has successfully launched six Long March 5 rockets since
2016, with the last one causing some safety concerns as its remnants
reentered the atmosphere in May.
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A model of the Long March-5 Y5 rocket from China's lunar exploration
program Chang'e-5 Mission is displayed at an exhibition inside the
National Museum in Beijing, China March 3, 2021. REUTERS/Tingshu
Wang/File Photo
"The proposal of keeping the upper stage of the
launch rocket to a guiding spacecraft, making one large 'kinetic
impactor' to deflect an asteroid, is a rather nice concept," said
Professor Alan Fitzsimmons from the Astrophysics Research Centre at
Queen's University Belfast.
"By increasing the mass hitting the asteroid, simple physics should
ensure a much greater effect," Fitzsimmons told Reuters, although,
he added, the actual operation of such a mission needs to be studied
in greater detail.
Current estimates show there is roughly a 1% chance a 100-metre-wide
asteroid would strike Earth in the next 100 years, said Professor
Gareth Collins at Imperial College London.
"Something the size of Bennu colliding is about 10 times less
likely," Collins said.
Altering an asteroid's path presents a lower risk than blasting the
rock with nuclear explosives, which may create smaller fragments
without changing their course, scientists say.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Additional reporting by Liangping Gao.
Editing by Gerry Doyle)
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