China plans to crash a spacecraft into a distant asteroid
It will be only the second country to conduct such a planetary defence experiment
SPACE ROCKS collide with Earth’s atmosphere all the time. The vast majority are too small to do any damage, but the risk of a larger asteroid (or comet) wiping out an underprepared city is one that space agencies around the world are taking seriously. The first goal of such would-be planetary defenders is detection: finding all objects capable of wreaking such damage and confirming that they are not on a collision course with Earth. The other goal is testing technologies that could either destroy any sizeable asteroids speeding towards the planet or else, more plausibly, deflect them away from it.
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This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Crash course”
From the November 9th 2024 edition
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