Good news!
If another, large asteroid were to hit earth that would cause a real climate crisis, not phony Global Warming demagoguery!
"China is looking to get into the planetary defense business. A new paper by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) confirms that in 2030, the country plans to conduct a test mission to deflect a small asteroid from its current course. ...
The Earth is struck by objects from outer space up to 50 times a day. Not that it matters much because most of these are the size of grains of sand. However, on rare occasions much larger objects hit us, and on extremely rare occasions these objects are large enough to cause extinction events like wiping out the dinosaurs.
Even something like a medium-sized asteroid can cause tremendous damage. It doesn't even have to hit the ground. In 2013, a meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia with the force of a 500-kiloton nuclear bomb, shattering windows and damaging buildings on the ground. In 1908, an asteroid exploded over Tunguska, Siberia with a force of up to 50 megatons. In both cases (and others), humanity was very, very lucky. ...
In a paper published in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration, the CNSA outlines a planned mission to demonstrate China's capability to carry out such a deflection. The target is a near-Earth asteroid about 100 ft (30 m) in diameter called (NEO) 2015 XF261, which passed within 31 million miles (50 million km) of us on June 9, 2024.
The purpose of the unnamed mission isn't just to deflect the asteroid, but to determine the shape, size, composition, and structure of the target asteroid using spectral and laser 3D detectors, mid-field color cameras, detection radars, and dust particle analyzers. ..."
Scientific Objectives and Configuration Payloads of Asteroid Defense Test Missions (open access, but in Chinese)
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