rammed into the non-threatening asteroid moonlet Dimorphos<\/a> at nearly 15,000 miles per hour (24,000 kilometers per hour) to alter its trajectory using kinetic impact. DART was the world\u2019s first planetary defense test, proving the agency\u2019s ability to deflect a hazardous asteroid.<\/p>\nNow, China is following up with its own approach for asteroid deflection. The Chinese spacecraft would rendezvous with its target during a close approach to Earth in 2029 or 2030, where the asteroid is estimated to be approximately 4.3 million miles away (7 million kilometers).<\/p>\n
The spacecraft would then strike the asteroid at a speed exceeding 5.6 miles per second (9 kilometers per second), compared to DART\u2019s 3.8 miles per second (6.1 kilometers). The impact speed would be equivalent to more than 26 times the speed of sound (Mach 26) at sea level. By comparison, DART slammed into Dimorphos at Mach 19, meaning China\u2019s proposed mission would deliver substantially more kinetic energy to its target asteroid.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a second spacecraft will be used to monitor the asteroid\u2019s orbit, shape, and surface before, during, and after the collision. NASA and its partners did it a bit differently. DART carried a second spacecraft\u2014the Italian Space Agency\u2019s LICIACube\u2014to observe the impact and the immediate aftermath. Later, in October 2024, the European Space Agency launched Hera, which is currently heading toward the pair and is expected to make close-up observations later this year. China, by comparison, plans to launch its two spacecraft on the same mission.<\/p>\n
Planetary threat <\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s DART mission succeeded in its objective, changing the moonlet\u2019s orbit around its parent asteroid by 33 minutes and altering the entire system\u2019s path around the Sun.<\/p>\n
The researchers behind the upcoming planetary defense threat claim that their approach would better simulate a real planetary defense scenario by altering the target asteroid\u2019s trajectory relative to Earth.<\/p>\n
\u201cDart was the first to demonstrate asteroid deflection by kinetic impact in space, but it did not directly change an asteroid\u2019s orbit around the sun relative to Earth, making it different from a real planetary-defence scenario,\u201d the researchers wrote, according to the South China Morning Post.<\/p>\n
The mission\u2019s target is near-Earth asteroid 2015 XF261, a relatively small space rock that\u2019s estimated to be around 98 feet wide (30 meters). The asteroid circles the Sun once every 359.7 days, and its orbit could bring it within close proximity of Earth.<\/p>\n
Since its discovery, the asteroid has only been observed 74 times, and little is known about its composition and rotation since it appears extremely faint. The scientists behind the mission are hoping to learn more about the asteroid prior to striking it and continue to monitor it afterwards to observe changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the success of NASA\u2019s DART mission, Chinese researchers are planning a new planetary defense test that they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[8110,9621,381,18,19,17,16032,133],"class_list":["post-598719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-asteroid-impact","tag-asteroids","tag-china","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-planetary-defense","tag-science"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116964211360704487","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}