In five years, the asteroid nicknamed Apophis will pass frighteningly close to the Earth and scientists are preparing for this once-in-a-lifetime observational event. Apophis will pass less than 20,000 miles from Earth, which is ten times closer than the Moon. The overflight should take place on April 13, 2029 and the proximity will allow scientists to send missions to rendezvous with the space rock and learn more.
How can we defend ourselves from an asteroid?
The asteroid Apophis 1,100 feet wide was first discovered in 2004 and flagged as a potential danger to Earth. Through further observations, scientists learned that it would be at least another century before it would have a chance to strike the Earth. Given the size of Apophis, we absolutely want to avoid an impact for as long as possible.
Scientists hope to learn from Apophis whether Earth’s gravitational field can influence the asteroid’s orientation, composition and rotation. They plan to compare the asteroid’s potential changes before and after the 2029 flyby. As for how they will get the data they need, private companies like Blue Origin and Exploration Labs they have already proposed missions.
Mission planned to the asteroid
Both companies presented their proposal for an asteroid encounter mission at the recent European Space Agency workshop. Plan Blue Origin involves the use of an orbital platform Blue Ring to deliver payloads to Apophis containing instruments and spacecraft to make the necessary observations. Meanwhile, Exploration Labs proposed that the Distributed Radar Observations of Interior Distributions, or DROID, could send a spacecraft to Apophis to scan the asteroid’s interior.
There NASA it also has two other spacecraft ready to be reused for studying asteroids. The Janus mission was supposed to send two probes in 2022 and 2023 for exploration missions, but delays and timing issues have led to them being put aside for now. But now the two probes could instead be used for an Apophis mission, allowing them to perform a flyby and make some observations.
Of course, there are still five years between now and the asteroid flyby Apophis, so there will certainly be more mission proposals and equipment repurposing between now and then. The passage of Apophis so close is an incredibly rare event, and the data that scientists are able to collect from these missions will undoubtedly be invaluable to our understanding of near-Earth objects and asteroid trajectories. Although for now we only know initial information about the company’s plans NASA for the private company’s mission and proposals, there will definitely be more announcements about this event in the near future, so stay tuned.
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