Following the success of NASA’s DART mission, Chinese researchers are planning a new planetary defense test that they claim is bolder and better adapted to protecting Earth from hazardous asteroids.

Scientists from the China National Space Administration outlined a plan to directly change an asteroid’s trajectory relative to Earth by striking it with a spacecraft at high speed, according to the South China Morning Post. China is aiming to pull off the space stunt before 2030, deploying two spacecraft: one to strike the asteroid and another to observe the impact.

Fast impact

The upcoming mission is designed to test new technologies that would keep Earth safe from hefty space rocks headed in our direction.

In September 2022, NASA’s DART spacecraft rammed into the non-threatening asteroid moonlet Dimorphos at nearly 15,000 miles per hour (24,000 kilometers per hour) to alter its trajectory using kinetic impact. DART was the world’s first planetary defense test, proving the agency’s ability to deflect a hazardous asteroid.

Now, 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).

The spacecraft would then strike the asteroid at a speed exceeding 5.6 miles per second (9 kilometers per second), compared to DART’s 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’s proposed mission would deliver substantially more kinetic energy to its target asteroid.

Meanwhile, a second spacecraft will be used to monitor the asteroid’s orbit, shape, and surface before, during, and after the collision. NASA and its partners did it a bit differently. DART carried a second spacecraft—the Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube—to 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.

Planetary threat

NASA’s DART mission succeeded in its objective, changing the moonlet’s orbit around its parent asteroid by 33 minutes and altering the entire system’s path around the Sun.

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’s trajectory relative to Earth.

“Dart was the first to demonstrate asteroid deflection by kinetic impact in space, but it did not directly change an asteroid’s orbit around the sun relative to Earth, making it different from a real planetary-defence scenario,” the researchers wrote, according to the South China Morning Post.

The mission’s target is near-Earth asteroid 2015 XF261, a relatively small space rock that’s 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.

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.