The target of an upcoming mission from China is the small asteroid 2019 VL5, about 33 meters, which orbits the Sun and comes close to Earth each year. The country will launch a spacecraft towards the space object on a defense mission, according to an announcement last week during the 8th IAA Planetary Defense Conference in Vienna. The idea is to prepare against future space rock threats.
O test is scheduled to take place in 2025 and will include an observer and impact spacecraft inside a Long March 3B rocket. After launch, each spacecraft will follow a different trajectory. A spacecraft will reach asteroid 2019 VL5 first to research and study it. its topography, while the second will follow on a collision course with the asteroid.
One of them will collide with the asteroid, to deviate its trajectory by up to 5 centimeters, which it can, in three months, increase to up to a thousand kilometers.
After impact, the observation spacecraft will return to check the asteroid. The test is similar to NASA’s DART mission, which collided with an asteroid in September 2022 and successfully altered its trajectory.
DART targeted a binary asteroid system, colliding with Dimorphos, a 160-metre-wide asteroid orbiting a larger space rock. However, China’s mission is targeting a much smaller asteroid, while sending two spacecraft after it.
The Chinese agency announced its asteroid smashing mission last year, revealing the country’s plans to create a complete planetary defense system that includes tracking near-Earth objects, collecting meteorites and developing deflection technologies.