The China National Space Administration (CNSA) is preparing an asteroid deflection mission to demonstrate its capabilities in protecting Earth from potentially harmful asteroids.

The mission will be two-fold: one spacecraft will collide with the asteroid to deflect it, while its companion will observe the asteroid's behavior and gather information to help scientists learn more about the Solar System and how it formed.

According to preliminary data, the mission is targeting an object named 2015 XF261, an asteroid nearly 30 meters in diameter. According to NASA's JPL data, this asteroid made its last close approach to Earth very recently, on July 9, 2024, it passed within 50 million km of our planet and is moving at a speed of 42,000 km/h.

As the non-profit organization Planetary Society noted, this will be China's first attempt to protect the planet Earth. The launch of the mission is planned for 2030.

NASA has already carried out a mission to protect the Earth from asteroids in 2022, when the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) probe collided with a Dimorphos asteroid. Later it turned out that the collision had unexpected consequences. as a result of the impact, Dimorphos' orbit lost stability, began to shrink, and as a result, the asteroid began to approach Didymos, the larger asteroid it orbits.

According to scientists' calculations, the impact should have changed the speed and trajectory of Dimorphos’ movement by 73 seconds. Before that, it completed one full revolution around Didymos in 11 hours and 55 minutes, but when the DART hit Dimorphos at 22,500 km/h, the period of one revolution was reduced to 32 minutes.