China's New Plan to Deflect Asteroid and Recent Test by Japan

[00:00:00]How wonderful person, this is Anton, and today we're going to be discussing something that was once thought to be a Hollywood movie plot, but is now officially a very real branch of global science. The idea we refer to as planetary defense, something that despite sounding like science fiction, is an actual real organization that at [clears throat] least in the US has existed since 2016. And naturally because the solar system is a kind of a cosmic shooting gallery. There's quite a lot of asteroids all over the place, and once in a while they have a tendency to crash on various planets and various moons. But recently it wasn't just the US, it was also other countries like Japan and China that have now officially made significant strides in learning how to protect our planet from potential future impacts. In this case by focusing on the idea referred to as asteroid redirection, or essentially trying to find a way to redirect a potentially dangerous asteroid before it has any chance to collide with the planet. And though the most famous mission is the one by NASA referred to as DART, the one you can learn more about in some of the videos in the description, and the one that produced this beautiful explosion, we now have some news from Japan and from China, and specifically from the Japanese space agency and the Chinese space agencies and the Chinese space agency that have been also working on their own missions and do have some updates. And here let's start with Japan. And that's because extremely recently on July 5th of 2026, JAXA, or Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, released this image. This was actually released by the Hayabusa 2 probe that you might remember as the mission that successfully returned the samples from the asteroid Ryugu. But here the second part of the mission was to actually try to do something else. This beautiful spacecraft was now sent on an extremely long journey in order to perform an incredibly close flyby of a near-Earth asteroid referred to as Torifune, an asteroid approximately 450 m across that's technically large enough to cause a major explosion on the surface, potentially even destroying some kind of a city. Although based on recent calculations, it's not expected to come anywhere close to planet Earth for several centuries. But because of its size and because of its location, it was essentially a perfect potential target in order to attempt something that Japan has never been able to do. Here they tried to get as close to the asteroid as possible in order to actually test the precision of control and to find out how accurate the trajectory would be compared to the theoretical predictions.

[00:02:42]In other words, they wanted to test their navigation systems. And that's of course in case one day they actually do have to perform a redirect mission by for example colliding the probe with the asteroid on approach to Earth. And here they were able to fly approximately 800 m away from the asteroid moving at over 5 km per second, which is honestly quite impressive considering the fact that the asteroid is only 450 m in diameter. And so to give you an idea of the precision required, the Japanese scientists compared this to basically trying to shoot an object through a tiny coin going from one side of Japan to the other. And so in this case the precision was indeed quite remarkable. But in this case there was also a kind of a surprise. Specifically, the type of the asteroid this turned out to be. And so compared to some of the initial predictions, this once again turned out to be a snowman. Technically known as the contact binary asteroid composed of two rounded objects essentially glued together. And this is not just a cool photo because this is vital for planetary defense. And as one of the scientists from NASA noted, we definitely have to understand the shapes of asteroids and the types of asteroids before we can collide with them. And so, for example, if this is some kind of a spongy asteroid or is solid rock, it's going to behave very differently if you hit it. And in this case, if you hit a snowman asteroid, it might actually react very differently compared to a single object. In this case, it might actually break apart and then reconnect again, reforming as a slightly different shape. In other words, these types of asteroids might require a completely different approach. And kind of related to this, as we discussed in some of the previous videos, in the last few years, scientists learned that quite a lot of asteroids turn out to be the same in shape. Or essentially, many different asteroids scientists discovered so far appear to be these snowman or contact binaries. And that's because the solar system contains a lot of different processes that tend to create two distinct co-orbiting bodies that gradually spiral closer and closer together, eventually fusing at extremely low velocities, and basically forming these snowman. Although in some cases, they're actually produced through a slightly different process, where a fast-spinning asteroid, which usually spins extremely fast because of the solar pressure coming from the solar wind, first falls apart and then actually forms a binary system that slowly merges in the process. In other words, both near-Earth asteroids and the Kuiper Belt objects tend to form similar shapes and eventually end up as these contact binaries, with many of them discovered in the last few years, and actually way more than anticipated. And so here too, the asteroid Tory Funa turned out to be one of these as well.

[00:05:32]But at least for now, when it comes to these types of missions, that's all we have from Japan. Okay, what about China?

[00:05:38]Well, while the Japanese scientists are focusing on our ability to navigate near these objects, China is now preparing a full-scale kinetic impact test, there is more to the DART mission. And technically they were actually supposed to launch it last year in 2025, but it was postponed for 2 years. And originally it was planned to target an asteroid referred to as 2019 VL5, but recent reports suggest that the new focus is a 30 m wide asteroid known as 2015 XF261, another near-Earth asteroid that has an extremely similar orbit to planet Earth.

[00:06:15]And so this mission is now scheduled to launch in 2027, and is actually quite ambitious because it aims to do two things. Here they're sending both the impactor [clears throat] and the observer spacecraft in order to watch the whole thing happen in real time. And the goal is to try to hit the asteroid at approximately 10 km/s in order to change its velocity by just a few centimeters per second, which is usually enough to completely change its orbit.

[00:06:41]With Chinese scientists explaining that this deviation will probably shift a trajectory by at least 1,000 km, >> [snorts] >> which is just enough to turn a direct hit into a near miss when it comes to planet Earth. And so here in 2027, the Long March 3B rocket is going to send a probe to Venus that's going to use Venus in order to slingshot to this asteroid by early 2029. And it's going to perform the collision sometimes around April of 2029, moving at a velocity of 10 km/s.

[00:07:14]With this mission that's going to be much closer to planet Earth, being a lot easier to observe and a lot easier to analyze. But importantly, it's going to provide additional science in helping us understand what happens when a fast-moving object collides with these ancient solar system objects.

[00:07:31]>> [snorts] >> Although in this case it might also be worth mentioning a few additional discoveries from the DART mission itself, because this 2022 mission is actually still continuously teaching us what seems to happen when you collide an object with a rubble pile asteroid. And that's because this mission taught us that when it comes to these collisions, there's actually something referred to as the beta factor, and specifically momentum enhancement. Because after this mission, scientists discovered that the impact didn't just move the asteroid because of the weight of the spacecraft, it also generated an enormous amount of cloud debris that was pushed back by the explosion and technically acted like a kind of a rocket engine, amplifying the motion by at least 3.6 times. With this asteroid losing over 1 million kilogram of mass, which shortened its period by 30 times more than NASA expected. In other words, when it comes to these collisions, there are still a lot of factors we don't really understand, and all of this seems to really depend on the type of the object we're colliding with. Which means that this future Chinese mission will most likely show us additional effects and will probably teach us just a little bit more about the idea of planetary defense.

[00:08:40]Especially because the asteroid they're colliding with seems to be not a rubble pile, but an actual rock or just one piece that seems to possess a lot more hardness. And so, I guess the last question is, so where does all of this leave us when it comes to planetary defense as of 2026? Well, currently, we've discovered over 34,000 near-Earth objects that might collide with the planet in the next few thousands of years. And though we don't expect any specific collisions for at least a few centuries, as of today, we've only discovered approximately 90% of all large asteroids, and there are still some that are hidden and have not been found yet. But more importantly, when it comes to much smaller rocks, specifically 140 m across or even smaller, as of today, scientists believe we only found maybe 40% maximum.

[00:09:29]Suggesting that a majority of them is still hiding, and it's quite important to try to find all of them as soon as possible because these types of asteroids, even though they're not really life-ending events, are still large enough to destroy a city and to create something that resembles a massive nuclear explosion. But, the good news here is that the international cooperation has been increasing and the International Asteroid Warning Network, also known as IAWN, has now been sharing data between various nations for the past few years. On top of this, we actually have a few telescopes that are now going to be discovering even more asteroids with the Chinese Wide-field Survey Telescope and the NASA's Vera Rubin Observatory most likely discovering millions more in the next few years, which will hopefully help us uncover a few more of these stealth asteroids in the orbit near our planet.

[00:10:18]But, we also have a few major milestones coming up in the next few years. First, there is the Hera mission. This is actually happening this year in 2026 and it's basically the ESA's attempt to arrive at Didymorphos, the asteroid that was struck by the DART mission, in order to investigate this crime scene. And so, here the idea is to measure the crater and the actual physical effects from the collision in order to find out exactly what happened back in 2022. But, we also have the 2029 passage of Apophis, the asteroid that did create a bit of a scare a few years back. And so, as this large asteroid passes very close to the planet, agencies like JAXA, ESA, NASA, and the Chinese Space Agency are already planning missions to study this as it passes. And it's actually going to pass just a few thousand kilometers away from the planet. And so, the next few years are definitely going to be exciting and will most likely teach us quite a lot.

[00:11:12]But, the bottom line at this point is this.

[00:11:15]Even today, we're not 100% ready yet.

[00:11:19]Even though we're no [clears throat] longer defenseless and even though for the first time in history, life on Earth actually has a physical way of preventing a potential extinction, at least the one caused by a cosmic impact, when it comes to understanding how to do this effectively, we're still lacking a few details, which means that we'll definitely come back and discuss this idea in some of the future videos, once there are some additional discoveries or additional redirect attempts. On that note, thank you for watching, subscribe, come back tomorrow to learn something else, support this channel on Patreon where you can find additional videos, videos without any ads, and can donate directly or by joining channel membership that grants you early access.

[00:11:55]You can also support this channel by buying the wonderful present t-shirt in the description below. Stay wonderful.

[00:12:00]I'll see you tomorrow, and as always, bye-bye.

[00:13:46]>> Mhm.