China is planning to launch a spacecraft with the aim of smashing a nearby asteroid, in an impact designed to test the feasibility of protecting against any Earth-threatening asteroids like the one that killed off the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago.
Researchers outlined their plans in a recent paper published in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration and spotted by The Planetary Society, saying that a test mission should happen before 2030 and that an asteroid with a diameter of about 30 meters will be the target.
Previously, the researchers had proposed a different asteroid dubbed 2019 VL5 as a target for this test mission, but the paper seems to indicate a new target with a similarly unwieldy name of 2015 XF261.
By Sharon Adarlo.
Full story at Yahoo News.
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