By Syndicated Content Jul 6, 2021 | 11:17 PM BEIJING (Reuters) â Chinese researchers want to send more than 20 of Chinaâs largest rockets to practice turning away a sizable asteroid â a technique that may eventually be crucial if a killer rock is on a collision course with Earth. The idea is more than science fiction. Sometime between late 2021 to early 2022, the United States will launch a robotic spacecraft to intercept two asteroids relatively close to Earth. When it arrives a year later, the NASA spacecraft will crash-land on the smaller of the two rocky bodies to see how much the asteroidâs trajectory changes. It will be humanityâs first try at changing the course of a celestial body.