[Reading Science] "Let's catch up with the US quickly"... China advances Earth Defense Experiment schedule

Change from 2026 to 2025
Change target asteroid to 2019 VL5
China Deep Space Exploration Institute "Core Technology Progress"

As China promotes its "space rise" and competes with the United States in space, it has accelerated its efforts by advancing the timing of an asteroid collision and trajectory alteration experiment?similar to the "Earth defense operation" experiment previously conducted by the U.S.?by one year.

On the 12th, space news outlet SpaceNews reported that Chen Qi, a researcher at China's Deep Space Exploration Institute, announced this asteroid trajectory alteration experiment plan last week at the Planetary Defense Conference of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) held in Vienna, Austria. The previously announced launch plan for 2026 has been moved up by one year, and the target asteroid has changed from 2020 PN1 to "2019 VL5." The Deep Space Exploration Institute is a state-owned organization established by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) in collaboration with Anhui Province and the University of Science and Technology of China for lunar and Mars exploration, among other missions.

Conceptual image of the Dart spacecraft. Photo by NASA website

The plan is to simultaneously launch an impact spacecraft and an observation satellite using the Long March 3B launch vehicle. This approach is identical to the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) recently conducted by the United States. However, China intends for the observation satellite to arrive at the target asteroid "2019 VL5" first to conduct preliminary observations and terrain assessments. The specific objective is to collide with the approximately 30-meter diameter 2019 VL5 at a speed of 6.4 km/s, altering the asteroid's velocity by about 5 cm/s.

The observation satellite will collect and transmit data necessary to evaluate and analyze the condition of 2019 VL5 after the collision. It is equipped with optical, radar, and laser remote sensing instruments, as well as dust and particle analyzers. The plan includes capturing phenomena caused by the collision from a 30 km orbit around the asteroid using high-resolution cameras. China also plans to observe the state of 2019 VL5 annually between October and November using ground-based celestial telescopes. Additionally, the Xuntian Space Telescope, scheduled for launch by the end of next year and to be installed on the Tiangong Space Station, will be utilized.

Previously, NASA, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), launched the DART impact spacecraft and Hera observation satellite in September last year to conduct a simulated asteroid deflection experiment targeting Dimorphos (approximately 170 meters in diameter), the moon of the asteroid Didymos, near Jupiter’s orbit about 11 million kilometers from Earth. The collision successfully shortened Dimorphos’s orbital period from 11 hours 55 minutes to 11 hours 22 minutes, a reduction of 33 minutes. Initially, a change of about 1 minute 13 seconds was considered a success.

China’s upcoming experiment involves a smaller target and a smaller impact spacecraft, so the collision’s effect is expected to be much less than that of DART. However, as a "kinetic impactor" experiment testing whether physical influence on a near-Earth asteroid can alter its trajectory to eliminate threats, it is broadly part of Earth defense plans. China explicitly listed such Earth defense experiments as a core area of space development research in its "White Paper on Space" released early last year.

At the conference, researcher Chen said, "Various technological innovations, including ultra-high-speed impact deformation modeling simulations, have already been achieved for this experiment," adding, "Participation from any country is welcome."