China To Save Earth From Deep Impact

REUTERS[ THURSDAY, JULY 07, 2005 12:41:12 AM]

BEIJING: China is drawing up its own version of the US-built Deep Impact probe, media reported on Wednesday, two days after the American spacecraft smashed into a comet. The third nation to launch a man into space has lofty space ambitions that include putting two astronauts into orbit this September and eventually sending up a space station and even a manned mission to the moon.

"Actually, our country has its own Deep Impact plans, it's just we've never revealed them to the public before," the Beijing News quoted Chinese astronomer Zhao Haibin as saying. "Right now, our focus is on a moon probe, but once that's successful, we will immediately start pursuing this plan."

The main goal of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Deep Impact mission was to knock free primordial materials from the nucleus of comet Tempel 1 that could unlock the secret of how life formed on Earth. China's mission would instead be mainly aimed at protecting the planet from being hit by a comet or asteroid, Mr Zhao said, referring to the kind of doomsday scenario shown in the 1998 film "Deep Impact", for which the US spacecraft was named.

As opposed to Nasa's "impacting" method, China would use a "more clever" method that could be called "pasting", he said, explaining the plan was to soft-land a craft with an engine capable of pushing a comet or asteroid off a collision course.

Mr Zhao said he and other astronomers at the Nanjing Zijinshan Observatory had tracked more than 700 space rocks potentially on track to hit the Earth by the end of June. [BD: I think this is an intentional mis-quote]

But China still had to overcome technical obstacles before it could send a comet collider into space, Xinhua news agency quoted Huang Chunping, the lead engineer behind sending China's first man into space in '03, as saying. "We still need to make sure that scientific data could be successfully transmitted back to the Earth via the impactor's mothership," Mr Zhao said.

This story was reported by Reuters, but the tone of the report seems to invite ridicule. Frankly, if China sees the wisdom in funding a program to deflect an asteroid on path to impact Earth...

Article Author: Bennett Dawson

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