We may not finally need Bruce Willis, but Armageddon is no longer a film as unlikely as it seemed. After the United States managed to divert an asteroid for the first time in history, China prepares to launch its own planetary defense mission this year. Of course, with something that NASA did not have: a second probe to record everything live.
A little context. In 2013, NASA and the European Space Agency created the AIDA program to demonstrate the asteroid deviation close to Earth. NASA’s kinetic impactor would crash at high speed on a small asteroid called Dimorfo, and the AIM orbiter developed by that would record the event live to measure the effects of impact.
ESA ended up abandoning the development of AIM due to the lack of financial support of the Member States. But NASA continued with the development of Dart and, on September 26, 2022, the asteroid successfully diverted, with a small Italian Cubesat (Lyciacube) as the only witness of the feat. The Hera Mission of ESA, AIM spiritual successor, is traveling to Dimorfo to take data from its arrival in December 2026, four years after the impact.
Now it’s China. Although NASA-that collaboration did not materialize as conceived, China has its own version of AIDA. For now it is known as “experimental test of the asteroid defense system close to Earth”, but is very close to becoming a reality (probably with a less aseptic name).
Wu Weiren, a designer of some of the most important missions of the Chinese space program, commented at a conference in Heféi that the launch is scheduled as this year aboard a CZ-3B rocket. If it succeeds, the mission will make China the second country in the world deliberately against an asteroid to modify its orbit. And what is better: with a second probe loaded with sensors to record the live impact.
Two ships instead of one. Unlike NASA’s mission, which sent a single Kamikaze probe with the Italian Cubesat inside, China’s plan contemplates the launch of two ships: an impactor and an observer that will make an exhaustive recognition. As for the asteroid, the chosen one is 2020 PN1, located in an orbit of horseshoe to dozens of millions of kilometers from the earth.
As Wu Weiren details, the observer will arrive first to map and obtain precise physical data. Shortly after, the impact ship will collide at high speed against the asteroid under the watchful eye of the observer, in addition to a combined network of telescopes on land and space. The objective is to accurately measure changes in orbit, morphology and material expelled by the clash of the ship, to evaluate the effectiveness of the impact. The goal is even more modest than that of Dart: produce an orbital deviation of between 3 and 5 centimeters.
More difficult than it seems. The ship will have to travel for months, adjusting its course to hit an object of just a few hundred meters in diameter, with a minimum margin of error. To which you have to add uncertainty about the composition of the asteroid: it is not the same to collide with a solid rock than against an amalgam of loose rubble.
The challenge is immense. “How to hit a fly from tens of millions of kilometers away,” published the Global Times. But NASA showed that it is possible, and now China has the opportunity to confirm that humanity is able to defend itself from one of the greatest existential threats faced by the Earth: the impact of a nearby object.
The first test of a long -term plan. This mission is just the first piece of an ambitious puzzle with which China plans to establish a complete detection and defense system against asteroids. The country already has a land surveillance network, which includes the telescope of the Purple Mountain Observatory and the “China Compound Eye” project, a set of radars capable of obtaining high -precision images of asteroids to millions of kilometers.
The plan is to complement this terrestrial network with a fleet of observation satellites in space and have a catalog of options to act as a threat is detected. It is not science fiction, but a real and urgent plan. In early 2025, in the midst of the growing concern for asteroid 2024 YR4, China opened a recruitment process in search of astrophysical experts and international cooperation to create their own planetary defense force.
Space muscle demonstration. This new mission comes at a time when China’s space program advances at a dizzying pace in contrast to NASA’s scientific cuts. China’s experience in handling deep space is growing, and has already achieved milestones that the United States does not possess, such as bringing samples of the hidden face of the moon.
In May of this year, China also launched the Tianwen-2 probe, which is directed to the quasi-satellite Kamo’oalewa to collect the first samples of this peculiar object, a probable fragment of our moon. The samples would arrive to the Earth in 2027. Subsequently, the ship will continue its trip to a cometr of the main belt, in the farthest mission ever undertaken by the country. The next step: bring the first Mars samples with Tianwen-3, something that seems that China will also get before the United States and Europe.
Image | THAT
In WorldOfSoftware | We already know that Asteroid YR4 will not collide with the earth. The probability of impact with the moon, on the other hand, has risen to 4%
