Last week, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) held its eighth planetary defense conference, during which China’s Deep Space Exploration Laboratory revealed more about its plans to slow down an asteroid using a spacecraft.
China has now decided to send two spacecraft to the approximately 30-meter asteroid 2019 VL5 to try to slow it down. One of the spacecraft is intended to collide with the asteroid to get it off course, while the other will observe how it all unfolds. The goal is to reduce the asteroid’s speed by about 5 meters per second.
The Chinese mission is described by Space News as a combination of NASA‘s DART mission and ESA’s upcoming Hera mission. NASA’s DART mission aimed to change the orbit of a smaller asteroid around a larger one, which it claimed to have succeeded in doing last year when a spacecraft caused the asteroid Dimorphos to change course.
ESA’s Hera mission aims to observe how NASA’s DART mission will affect the binary asteroid system Didymos in the long run, a system consisting of the main asteroid Didymos and its “moon” Dimorphos that the DART spacecraft collided with. ESA plans to send Hera in the direction of Didymos in October 2024.
Sometime around 2025, China plans to send the two spacecraft that will collide with and observe the asteroid 2019 VL5 into space.
