On October 22, at the main forum of the China Association for Science and Technology Annual Conference held in Hefei, Anhui, Wu Weiren, chief designer of China's lunar exploration project, director and chief scientist of the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory, and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, introduced China's plans for deep space exploration in the next 15 years. Academician Wu revealed that in the next 15 years, China's deep space exploration will demonstrate and implement ten major engineering tasks in three fields: lunar exploration, planetary exploration, and launch technology.
Specifically include:The fourth phase of the Chang'e 6/7/8 lunar exploration project, the International Lunar Research Station, manned lunar landing, Queqiao Telecom Comprehensive Constellation System, Tianwen-2 asteroid sampling and detection, near-Earth asteroid defense, Tianwen-3 Mars sampling, Jupiter galaxy and interplanetary crossing detection, and solar system edge detection.
In the field of launch, our country will demonstrate the implementation of heavy-duty launch vehicle projects.Breakthroughs in key technologies such as 10-meter rocket body diameter and high-thrust liquid oxygen methane engine have increased my country's low-Earth orbit carrying capacity from 25 tons to 150 tons., laying a solid foundation for future deep space exploration.
Among them, in terms of defense against near-Earth asteroids,In view of the extremely low probability and extremely harmful event of a near-Earth asteroid impacting the earth, a kinetic energy impact will be carried out on an asteroid tens of millions of kilometers away to change its orbit, and the impact effect will be evaluated in orbit to achieve "accurate impact, pushable, measured, and clear explanation."
Prior to this, Chen Qi, director of the China Deep Space Exploration Laboratory System Research Institute, had disclosed my country's development blueprint for near-Earth asteroid defense. It planned to achieve a kinetic energy impact on an asteroid in 2030, achieve push-off deflection between 2030 and 2035, and initially have the ability to control the orbit of an asteroid by 2045.
Wu Yanhua, deputy director of the National Space Administration, said that my country will start to establish a near-Earth asteroid defense system to jointly respond to the threat of near-Earth asteroid impacts and contribute to the protection of the earth and human security.
my country’s first near-Earth asteroid defense mission is expected to achieve three major scientific goals:
The first is to reveal the dynamic evolution rules of the impact target and detect the orbital characteristics of the target asteroid.
The second is to reveal the inherent characteristics of the impact target and detect the shape, size, composition and structure of the target asteroid.
The third is to reveal the law of impact momentum transfer and conduct research on wall impact effects such as terrain changes and spatter distribution.
On September 27, 2022, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted the first asteroid defense exercise in human history, using a satellite called "DART" to impact a 160-meter-diameter asteroid 11 million kilometers away and change its orbit.