Chinese scientists are developing a plan to launch more than 20 rockets into space to save Earth from an asteroid that could cause irreparable damage to our planet, according to Live Science..

We are talking about the asteroid Bennu weighing 85.5 million tons, which should fly within 7.5 million km from the Earth's orbit between 2175 and 2199 years.

The calculated kinetic energy of Bennu's collision with the Earth is 1200 megatons, which is about 80 thousand. times the energy of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Scientists from the National Space Research Center of China have calculated that a simultaneous strike by 23 Long March 5 rockets, each of which weighs 992 tons, could change the asteroid's course by almost 9000 km (1.4 times the radius of the Earth).

“Asteroid impacts pose a serious threat to all life on Earth,” wrote Mingtao Li, research engineer at the National Space Science Center in Beijing.. "

Bennu is a B-type asteroid, which means it contains large amounts of carbon and possibly many of the primary molecules present when life began on Earth.. NASA has already sent a spacecraft called Osiris-Rex to collect samples from the asteroid's surface. Osiris-Rex was near Bennu in October 2020 and should return to Earth with samples in 2023.

Long March 5 is the working rockets of China's space program, they make most of the shipments to the space station.? China and launch Chinese probes to Mars and the Moon. But they present a certain problem due to their uncontrolled return to Earth.. In May, the 22-ton part of the Long March 5 rocket fell to Earth (either burned up or landed in the sea near the Arabian Peninsula). It is also believed that in May 2020, fragments of a previous rocket, sent on March 5, crashed into two villages in Cote d'Ivoire..