{"id":67692,"date":"2024-04-27T18:42:58","date_gmt":"2024-04-27T23:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67692"},"modified":"2024-04-27T18:42:58","modified_gmt":"2024-04-27T23:42:58","slug":"how-scientists-are-preparing-for-apophiss-unnervingly-close-brush-with-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67692","title":{"rendered":"How Scientists Are Preparing for Apophis’s Unnervingly Close Brush With Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How Scientists Are Preparing for Apophis’s Unnervingly Close Brush With Earth<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n

The potentially hazardous asteroid is on its way for an uncomfortably close flyby of Earth in 2029<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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.<\/figcaption>
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Image:\u00a0NASA\/JPL-CalTech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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In about five years\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s no need to panic just yet, and that the asteroid has\u00a0no chance of crashing into Earth for at least another century<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s 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\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n

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Images of Apophis captured by radio antennas at the Deep Space Network\u2019s Goldstone complex in California and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia when the asteroid was 10.6 million miles (17 million kilometers) away.<\/figcaption>
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Image:\u00a0NASA\/JPL-Caltech and NSF\/AUI\/GBO<\/figcaption>
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During its upcoming flyby, scientists want to explore the asteroid to determine whether Earth\u2019s gravitational field will have an impact on Apophis\u2019 orientation, composition, and spin…<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[34413,7167,5677,25832,34412],"class_list":["post-67692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-apophis","tag-asteroid","tag-gizmodo","tag-near-earth-object","tag-passant-rabie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67693,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67692\/revisions\/67693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}