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How Scientists Are Preparing for Apophis’s Unnervingly Close Brush With Earth

April 27, 2024

How Scientists Are Preparing for Apophis’s Unnervingly Close Brush With Earth

The potentially hazardous asteroid is on its way for an uncomfortably close flyby of Earth in 2029.

This is radar image of a near-Earth asteroid similar to Apophis. We actually know very little about what Apophis looks like, but its pending flyby in 2029 will provide scientists with an unprecedented look.
This is radar image of a near-Earth asteroid similar to Apophis. We actually know very little about what Apophis looks like, but its pending flyby in 2029 will provide scientists with an unprecedented look.
Image: NASA/JPL-CalTech

In about five years’ time, a potentially hazardous asteroid will swing by Earth at an eerily close distance of less than 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers). During this rare encounter, Apophis will be ten times closer to Earth than the Moon and scientists want to take full advantage of its visit.

Apophis is a on trajectory towards an Earth flyby on April 13, 2029. When it was first discovered in 2004, the 1,100-foot-wide (335 meters) near-Earth object was designated as a hazardous asteroid that could impact our planet. Later observations, however, reassured scientists that there’s no need to panic just yet, and that the asteroid has no chance of crashing into Earth for at least another century.

That’s very good news given the size of this object and the serious damage it would inflict should it some day strike our planet. Hopefully that’ll never happen, but objects of this size tend to hit Earth about once every 80,000 years, unleashing catastrophic damage and global-scale impact winters.

Images of Apophis captured by radio antennas at the Deep Space Network’s Goldstone complex in California and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia when the asteroid was 10.6 million miles (17 million kilometers) away.
Images of Apophis captured by radio antennas at the Deep Space Network’s Goldstone complex in California and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia when the asteroid was 10.6 million miles (17 million kilometers) away.
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech and NSF/AUI/GBO

During its upcoming flyby, scientists want to explore the asteroid to determine whether Earth’s gravitational field will have an impact on Apophis’ orientation, composition, and spin…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

From Nukes To ‘Gravity Tractors’ – How Well Prepared Is Earth For An Impending Asteroid Strike?

May 8, 2019

From Nukes To ‘Gravity Tractors’ – How Well Prepared Is Earth For An Impending Asteroid Strike?

NASA launches an asteroid strike simulation this week, but what would happen if a devastating asteroid was coming our way today? RT asks an expert about the tools available, and how long it will be until we’re fully prepared.

While hundreds of small asteroids and meteorites have hit Earth, big objects, like the 55 foot one that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013 only occur around twice a century, and larger (dinosaur-destroying) ones are even less common. However, NASA warns that “given the current incompleteness of the NEO [Near Earth Object] catalogue, an unpredicted impact could occur at any time.”

At the start of 2019, NASA reported there were 19,000 known near-Earth asteroids, with an average of 30 new ones found each week.

Detlef Koschny, co-manager of the Space Situational Awareness (SSA)-NEO Segment of the European Space Agency, told RT that it’s not the large NEOs that we need to worry about, though, but the smaller ones, as scientists are only aware of “one percent or less” of them and “they could still damage a city or region.”

Ideally, scientists hope to have several years’ warning of an approaching NEO of 100 meters or more, but when it comes to smaller ones, it is “more difficult to see them early on,” Koschny explains.

Offensive defense

“Anything larger than 50 meters we’d try to deflect,” Koschny said, pointing to NASA’s 2022 Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which aims to intercept an asteroid’s moonlet when it gets within 11 million kilometers of Earth. The hope is that it can “change the speed of an asteroid via a kinetic impact,” he explained.

Unfortunately, deflection methods require a few years of preparation, and the correct spacecraft would need to be built.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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