China has an ambitious plan for a “Planetary Defense System,” to protect the Earth against celestial threats. Wu Weiren, the chief designer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, has released his idea for a daring new phase of that program in a Chinese peer-reviewed scientific journal Scientia Sinica Informationis, the July 27 Mashable SE Asia news service reports, in an article, titled, “China Plans To Use the Moon as Outpost To Defend Earth against Asteroids.”
Mashable continues, “For the idea to work, two optical telescopes would be constructed and placed at the Moon’s north and south poles, and would work to scan the vast expanse around them to detect any asteroids or celestial objects that might have slipped through the detection network based on the ground. These would include objects coming towards Earth from the blind side facing the Sun.”
At the same time, “guardian” satellites, carrying significant amounts of fuel and armed with kinetic weapons, would be sent into the Moon’s orbit of the Earth, and be able to intercept asteroid threats as soon as they are detected either by optical telescopes on the Moon, or by telescopes and giant radars placed on Earth. The guardian satellites could either intercept and displace the asteroid from its path, or blow it up.
“It will have the ability to intercept incoming asteroids from all directions, and can form a defense circle about twice the size between the Moon and Earth—about 800,000 km in diameter,” explains Chinese scientist Wu Weiren. It is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of small to medium-sized asteroids and comets in proximity and/or on a pathway to Earth, any of which could destroy a city or devastate a country.
In 2011, Dmitry Rogozin, then Russia’s special envoy to NATO, proposed to the U.S. government for cooperation in asteroid defense, under the name: Strategic Defense of Earth (SDE), hearkening to the Strategic Defense Initiative. The SDI as designed by Lyndon LaRouche, was to be a joint U.S.-Soviet program to use “new physical principles,” including controlled energy beams, lasers, etc. to defend Earth from nuclear missiles. The program would also be an immense science driver for both countries. The Soviets rejected the SDI; the U.S. did not accept Rogozin’s SDE offer.
In January 2019, China placed a radio telescope on the far side of the Moon. They would now place telescopes at each of the Moon’s poles. This could mesh with China’s plan to build a research station at the Moon’s south pole. It is highly likely that China also plans to move from kinetic methods of destroying asteroids to using coherent energy beams.
A “Planetary Defense System” that involved China and the U.S., joined by Russia, which has expertise in this field, would immensely benefit mankind, and deflect the current trans-Atlantic trajectory toward nuclear war.
