China has chosen a near-Earth asteroid to test its new planetary defense system. Asteroid 2019 VL5 will be the target of a mission from China, which will combine observations of the space rock and an orbital drift test. The project was unveiled by Chen Qi of China’s Deep Space Exploration Laboratory during a presentation at the Planetary Defense Conference in Vienna, Austria.

2019 VL5 is a small space rock about 33 meters in diameter that completes an orbit around the sun every 365 days..

The mission will have one spacecraft for the impact and another for the observations. Both are to be launched in 2025 by a Long March 3B rocket, which will place them on different trajectories to asteroid 2019 VL5.

The observation ship will arrive at the asteroid to make initial observations and analyzes of the topography. The other will collide with the asteroid at about 6.4 km/s to try to change its speed to 5 cm/s. After the impact, the observation ship will return to study the asteroid. Mission scientists say this could shift the asteroid’s orbit by about a thousand miles after three months.

This new project is part of the country’s planetary defense plan, which also envisages detection of asteroids and a warning system for potentially dangerous rocks.