Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab

China has unveiled their first comprehensive plan for a near-Earth asteroid defense system.

The proposed strategic concept for asteroid defense development was rolled out during the Third International Deep Space Exploration Conference held last week in Hefei, the provincial capital of Anhui in east China.

Chinese scientists are calling for global partners to work together to protect the safety of the Earth from an impact event.

Strategic concept

Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program, said the strategic concept has been put forward within the framework of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS).

According to China Central Television (CCTV),  the concept “covers aspects of monitoring and early warning, in-orbit handling, and systematic response, with the goal of building a comprehensive near-Earth asteroid detection and defense system.”

Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab

China’s asteroid defense system includes an integrated, space-ground collaborative monitoring and early warning system capable of precise alerts and routine operation, said Wu, also director and chief scientist of the Hefei-based Deep Space Exploration Lab, the conference’s organizer.

Observer and impactor spacecraft

Wu said the mission will follow a “fly-along–impact–fly-along” model, involving both an “observer” and an “impactor” spacecraft.

The observer will arrive first to conduct close-up surveys of the target asteroid, collecting detailed physical parameters.

Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab

The impactor will then strike the asteroid at high speed, while both spacecraft, together with ground- and space-based assets, record the event using advanced imaging technologies to precisely assess the results, Wu said.

“We are going to launch a kinetic impactor to meet a small celestial body coming towards us at a distance of about 10 million kilometers. The convergence is expected to generate tremendous kinetic energy to change the orbit of this small celestial body. And the strike will prevent it from hitting the Earth again for at least several decades or even 100 years,” Wu said.

Scientific, economic value

Yan Wei, senior engineer at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, added his view.

Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab

“From the scientific community’s perspective, asteroids are relatively less evolved, so they have preserved some of the original materials from the early formation of the solar system. Therefore, exploring and studying them are very helpful for understanding the origin of our solar system, as well as the evolutionary history of planets.”

Li Haiyang, senior engineer at the Deep Space Exploration Lab, told CCTV that asteroids offer very significant resource value, and may contain many scarce resources that are not found on the Earth.

“From the perspective of future development,” Li said, “it is therefore a highly promising target. We hope to launch more spacecraft to asteroids to obtain more detailed data.”

For more detail, go to this CCTV videos – “China unveils blueprint for asteroid defense mission” – at:

https://www.facebook.com/NewsContent.CCTVPLUS/videos/776416955119199

Also, go to:

https://www.cctvplus.com/news/20250906/8444015.shtml

Image credit: Illustration by John DiJulio, University of Virginia Communications