CHINA wants to fire dozens of rockets into space to divert asteroid which has the potential to hit and harm the Earth.
Scientists from the National Center for Space Science China said it only took 23 Long March 5 rockets to divert the asteroid from its path by a distance greater than Earth’s radius.
One asteroid that researchers have been eyeing as a potential target is Bennu.
Launching from the Metro page, Thursday (8/7/2021), Bennu is a rock weighing 78 billion kilograms that will be within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth’s orbit in the next 150 years.
This celestial body is considered a potentially dangerous threat. Bennu is estimated to be as tall as the Empire State Building, and belongs to the class of rock that has the potential to cause damage.
While Bennu’s chance of hitting Earth is only 1 in 2,700, the potential for destruction would be so great that scientists have started thinking about ways to avoid the asteroid’s arrival.
The asteroid diversion attempt with the Long March 5 rocket, published in the planetary science journal Icarus, is not the first.
NASA will also try to divert two asteroids with a robotic spacecraft close to Earth sometime later this year, with the Dual Asteroid Diversion Test (DART).
(DRM)
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