[ad_1]
Chinese scientists plan to fire more than 20 rockets into space to hijack a asteroid impact that has a small chance to one day end life on Earth.
Their target is an asteroid named Bennu, an 85.5 million ton (77.5 million metric ton) space rock that is poised to dive to within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometers). of Earth’s orbit between 2175 and 2199. Although Bennu’s chances of hitting Earth are slim – at just 1 in 2,700 – the asteroid is as wide as the Empire State Building is tall, meaning that any collision with Earth would be cataclysmic.
The estimated kinetic energy of Bennu’s impact with Earth is 1,200 megatons, about 80,000 times the energy of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. For comparison, the space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs provided around 100 million megatons of energy, Live Science previously reported.
Related: The 7 strangest asteroids: Weird space rocks in our solar system
Scientists from the National Space Science Center of China calculated that 23 Long March 5 rockets, each weighing 992 tons (900 metric tons), simultaneously pushing against the rock would be needed to divert the asteroid from a fatal trajectory of nearly 9. 000 km. – 1.4 times the radius of the Earth. Their calculations are detailed in a new study published in the next November 1 issue of the journal. Icarus.
“Asteroid impacts pose a major threat to all life on Earth,” wrote Mingtao Li, a space science engineer at the Beijing National Space Science Center and lead author of the new study. “The deflection of an asteroid on an impact path is essential to mitigate this threat.”
The plan of Chinese scientists would avoid the need to stop the asteroid by more direct, but riskier means, like the atomic bomb method popularized by Bruce Willis in the movie “Armageddon”. In reality, the explosion of the incoming space rock would shatter it into several smaller pieces that could still collide with Earth, with devastating consequences.
The Chinese plan follows a similar, but slightly more expensive, earlier proposal made by the United States. NASA’s plan, called the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER), would send a fleet of 30-foot-tall (9-meter) spacecraft with rams to deflect the asteroid from its path. NASA simulations suggest that 34 to 53 shots from the HAMMER spacecraft, launched 10 years before Bennu’s collision with Earth, would be needed to move the asteroid.
NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) will be the first to test a new method of moving asteroids during two joint missions launched on November 24 this year. The DART (Double Asteroid Redirection) mission will send a spacecraft to arrive a year later on the Didymos asteroid system 11 million kilometers away. Once there, the NASA spacecraft will crash into Didymos’ moon, a rock orbiting the asteroid. ESA mission Hera will then monitor how DART deflected the moon.
Bennu is a Type B asteroid, which means it contains large amounts of carbon and potentially many primordial molecules present when life emerged on Earth. NASA has previously sent a spacecraft, called the Osiris-Rex, in pursuit of samples of the asteroid. Osiris-Rex arrived over Bennu in October 2020, floating above him long enough to collect loose pieces on his surface with his 3m (10ft) arm. Osiris-Rex is expected to return to Earth with his loot in 2023.
The March 5 Long March rockets are the workhorses of the Chinese space program, completing most deliveries to the Chinese space station and launching Chinese probes to Mars and the Moon. Rockets have raised concerns in the past due to their uncontrolled re-entry to Earth. In May, the 22 ton (20 metric ton) section of a Long March 5 rocket fell to Earth, burning or landing in the sea near the Arabian Peninsula. In May 2020, fragments of a previous rocket from March 5 crashed into two villages in Côte d’Ivoire.
Originally posted on Live Science
[ad_2]
Source link