China has started assembling a planetary defense team to counter the threat of near-Earth asteroids following the discovery of a large asteroid that could strike our planet in seven years. The asteroid, estimated to be 40 to 90 meters wide, was discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, run by the University of Hawai’i, in December 2024. The discovery activated global asteroid response mechanisms after the odds of an impact with Earth surpassed an international monitoring threshold.
Weeks after the asteroid’s discovery, a special projects center at China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense posted a recruitment notice listing three available roles for a “planetary defense post.”
