China has begun recruiting a "planetary defense force" after risk assessments showed an asteroid could potentially hit Earth in 2032, the Guardian reports.
Job advertisements released this week by the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) target young, loyal graduates focused on aerospace engineering, international cooperation and asteroid detection.
The recruitment comes amid growing focus on an asteroid with a low but growing probability of hitting Earth in seven years. Asteroid 2024 YR4 is at the top of the risk list for European and US space agencies, and last week analysts raised their estimate of the probability of an impact from 1,3 to 2,2 percent. The United Nations' Space Mission Planning Advisory Group, which includes countries with space programs, including China, meets regularly to consider appropriate responses.
Advertisements were posted on WeChat earlier this week, with 16 job openings at SASTIND, including three for the new "planetary defense force."
They invited young graduates under the age of 35 with professional and technical qualifications and a "strong political stance" in support of the Communist Party of China and an ideology aligned with leader Xi Jinping.
These ads sparked widespread discussion online among young people – a population that experienced record-high unemployment rates in 2023.
"The country would depend on the three of you. Isn't that stressful?" one user asked.
"If you succeed, you will be a hero who saves the world. But no one would punish you if you fail – I mean, there would literally be 'no one' who would do it," read a popular comment on Weibo
The job description suggests that the planetary defense force will focus on international cooperation and designing systems for new and experimental technologies. The jobs are described as "near-Earth asteroid surveillance and early warning research," and require graduates with a master's degree or higher in astrophysics, Earth and space exploration technology, and aerospace science and technology.
China's aerospace sector is advancing rapidly, and it is not clear whether this recruitment is directly related to the asteroid discovery.
Andrew Jones, a SpaceNews correspondent specializing in China's space sector, said the timing of the recruitment appears to be coincidentally linked to the discovery of 2024 YR4, and that the jobs are likely "complementary to China's already established efforts to develop planetary defense capabilities."
"This includes surveillance and warning systems, both on Earth and potentially in space, and preparations for testing measures such as kinetic impacts to change the orbits of threatening asteroids," he explained.
Deflecting asteroids like 2024 YR4 is apparently a key focus of China's aerospace development, including plans to replicate NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) in 2020. DART involved a spacecraft colliding with the 160-meter-long asteroid Dimorphos, successfully deflecting its trajectory for the first time. The European Space Agency later launched a second spacecraft to observe and report on DART's impact with Dimorphos.
China is also preparing for its own asteroid deflection test on a smaller asteroid called 2015 XF261 in 2027. However, Harrison Agrusa, a scientist at the Côte d'Azur Observatory, expressed concern about the smaller size of the target China is aiming for.
"Given what we learned from DART, a similar mission on a much smaller target would likely destroy it completely. That may not be the most useful strategy, as it could create an even bigger problem by turning a single missile (with a known trajectory) into many fragments (with unknown trajectories)," he pointed out.
Agrusa stressed that there is no need to be overly afraid of 2024 YR4, noting that multiple countries and space organizations are working together on it.
"We know that we have the ability to deflect an asteroid like this, which was proven by the DART mission. So this asteroid should not be feared, but should be studied and understood," the scientist concluded.
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