China To Send 23 Rockets To Save Earth From 'Armageddon'

Asteroid Bennu could be a big problem if it hit Earth. (photo: Doc. NASA)

JAKARTA - In a mission to save Earth from an asteroid attack, Chinese space scientists plan to fire 23 rockets into space. Their target is an asteroid named Bennu.

Quoted from Live Science, Sunday, July 18, this asteroid is a space rock weighing 85.5 million tons or 77.5 million metric tons that is within 4.6 million miles or 7.5 million kilometers from Earth's orbit. Bennu is on a path that could snatch Earth's orbit between the years 2175 and 2199.

Although Bennu's chances of striking Earth are small, at a scale of 1 in 2,700, the asteroid is quite large, as wide as the Empire State Building. That is, if the asteroid hits Earth, it is claimed this event will be catastrophic.

The kinetic energy generated by Bennu when it hit Earth is about 1,200 megatons, which is 80,000 times greater than the energy of the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. In comparison, the space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs produces about 100 million megatons of energy.

Scientists at China's National Space Science Center will deploy 23 Long March 5 rockets, each weighing 992 tons. It is known that Long March 5 has largely completed most of the deliveries to the Chinese space station and launched the Chinese rover to Mars and the Moon.

This rocket could later push the asteroid Bennu together, diverting the asteroid away from its fatal path by nearly 6,000 miles or 9,000 kilometers. The scientists' calculations are detailed in a new study published in the November 1 issue of the journal Icarus.

Mingtao Li, a space science engineer from the National Space Science Center and lead author of the study, Mingtao Li, said: "Asteroid impacts pose a major threat to all life on Earth. Bending the asteroids on the impact trajectory is critical to mitigating this threat.

However, the Long March 5 rocket is quite a cause for concern given its past flight as it re-enters Earth uncontrollably. In May 2021, the 22-ton or 20 metric tonne portion of the Long March 5 rocket fell to Earth.

Some of the fragments caught fire and some landed in the sea near the Arabian peninsula. Earlier, in May 2020, another Long March 5 rocket fragment was believed to have hit two villages in Ivory Coast.

The Chinese scientists' plan to avoid an asteroid colliding with Earth uses a method similar to the atomic bomb popularized by Bruce Willis in the film "Armageddon." This is a film that describes the occurrence of the threat of a meteor shower striking Earth.

Previously, the United States Space Agency (NASA) also had a similar mission called the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER), which aims to send a fleet of nine-meter-tall spacecraft with a battering ram to crash the asteroid away from Earth.

These NASA simulations show that 34 to 53 hits from the HAMMER spacecraft, which launched 10 years before Bennu collided with Earth, would be needed to shift the asteroid.

Bennu itself is a type B asteroid, which means it contains a high amount of carbon. NASA has already sent a spacecraft, called Osiris-Rex, to take samples from the asteroid.

Osiris-Rex arrived above Bennu in October 2020, floating above it long enough to collect loose pieces of the asteroid's surface with its 10-foot or three-meter-long arm features. Osiris-Rex is expected to return to Earth with the loot in 2023.

Image Credit: Doc. NASA